Tag Archive for: heart failure

CAR T-Cell Therapy Patient Eligibility | What Patients Should Know

CAR T-Cell Therapy Patient Eligibility | What Patients Should Know from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

What should CAR T-cell therapy patients know about patient eligibility? Expert Dr. Krina Patel from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center discusses transplant eligibility factors, why the factors are examined, and proactive advice for patients.

[ACT[IVATION TIP

“…tell your doctor, “I’m interested in CAR T. I want to go talk to a CAR T center.” And that’s where they can tell you if something is possible or not.”

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What Is the Impact of CAR T Therapy Access Barriers on Patients?

What Is the Impact of CAR T-Cell Therapy Access Barriers on Patients?

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What Are CAR T-Cell Therapy Requirements for Care Partners?

CAR T-Cell Therapy Follow-Up Monitoring | What Patients Can Expect

CAR T-Cell Therapy Follow-Up Monitoring | What Patients Can Expect

Transcript:

Lisa Hatfield:

Dr. Patel, what challenges exist in navigating the complexities of patient eligibility criteria for CAR T therapy, particularly in the context of comorbidities and prior treatments and how can these challenges be navigated more effectively?

Dr. Krina Patel:

Yeah, I think it’s, people compare it to stem cell transplant all the time, and that’s my biggest activation tip. Transplant eligibility is not the same as CAR T eligibility. CAR T eligibility is much easier. So the absolute contraindication I would say for CAR T, is probably my patients with dementia, right? Because some of the chemo that we give prior to the CAR T can worsen that. And things like ICANS, this neurotoxicity can worsen some of those symptoms and we don’t want that.

That’s where I would use a bispecific instead where we’ve seen some great responses, but everybody else, again, even if you’re on dialysis and you have kidney failure, we can change the dosing of that chemo and patients do really well with CAR T. We work with the nephrologist, to make sure we don’t cause volume overload or anything else that they’re doing dialysis on time. We’re changing things up, etcetera. Patients with cardiomyopathy, so heart failure, again, we don’t want to go in when you have active heart failure, but just because you have a history of heart failure, we can do things to make sure that you don’t get, again, volume overload or, too much pressure on your heart.

Even patients with history of strokes, in the clinical trials that wasn’t allowed, but in the real world, again, as long as you’re not needing active therapy for your stroke, meaning, blood thinners, things like that yet anymore, then we can actually still potentially get you through CAR T. We have patients who aren’t able to speak.

They have expressive aphasia from history of stroke, but we actually have charts where we can figure out what their ICE scores are for ICANS. And we can make sure we, that they’re not having neurotoxicity. So we have other means by making sure that things are going well during that CAR T therapy that I think it’s really up to them. If they’re interested in it, my activation tip here is tell your doctor, “I’m interested in CAR T. I want to go talk to a CAR T center.” And that’s where they can tell you if something is possible or not. And I will say for the most part, most of my patients can get through CAR T. Again, we’ll talk about the different products. We’ll talk about how we would do it, how we would change it potentially.

But again, I have so many patients that are over a year, two years out without any therapy now. And they’re doing fantastically. And, and again, my patients with comorbidities and my older patients, they’re the ones who benefit when we’re not on any therapy because continuous therapy ends up causing more toxicity for them. And so I think it’s really, really important to speak up to your doctor and just say, this is something I’d really be interested in. And, any one of our centers would be happy to explain what we would do differently as well as, which product is the best one for you based on that risk comorbidity and the risk-benefit ratio.

Lisa Hatfield:

That again is great information. I’m glad you addressed the kidney dysfunction issue because we have several people in our support group who worry that they won’t be eligible for CAR T therapy because they have kidney dysfunction. So they’re all seeing specialists, which is the way to go for patients, to always see a specialist. So thank you so much, Dr. Patel.


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Increased MPN Symptoms | What Does It Mean for Patients?

Increased MPN Symptoms | What Does It Mean for Patients? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

What might an increase in myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) symptoms indicate? MPN specialist Dr. Naveen Pemmaraju discusses possible reasons for an increase in symptoms and shares advice for seeking care when experiencing common issues. 

Dr. Naveen Pemmaraju is Director of the Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm (BPDCN) Program in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Learn more about Dr. Pemmaraju

 

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Thriving With an MPN: Advice for Setting Goals and Making Treatment Decisions

Thriving With an MPN | Advice for Setting Goals and Making Treatment Decisions 

Are There Predictors That an MPN May Be Progressing

Are There Predictors That an MPN May Be Progressing? 

Understanding and Managing Common MPN Symptoms and Side Effects

Understanding and Managing Common MPN Symptoms and Side Effects


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

What might an increase in symptoms mean? Does it mean that the disease is progressing or that maybe it’s time to change therapies?   

Dr. Pemmaraju:

Yeah, possibly. So, with all this objective evidence, there are different buckets of disease progression. And some of them are objective and obvious, rising spleen, increasing blasts, or leukemia cells in the peripheral blood. The start of transfusion dependency for either anemia or platelets that weren’t there before. Sometimes, there are obvious things that you can point to, but there are a couple of scenarios where it’s not as obvious. You just named one. One is increasing symptom burden profile. You see, sometimes you have to think about, is it the sequela of the treatment itself or is it disease progression?  

I’ll give an example. If you start on an Interferon product and the dose is too high, you may be feeling not so great from the interferon. But maybe in that case, a simple dose reduction was the answer, because then you’re still getting the anti-disease activity, less side effects and all that. So, I’ll answer your question by saying possibly, but it can’t be the whole story. So, increasing symptoms is a harbinger, it’s a red flag.

In the clinic, it means pause. Workup, is this a subject of the treatment itself? Is it because the disease is progressing? Do we need to do a restaging and workup, whether that means a bone marrow biopsy, whatever that means? Or again, let’s put that other in there. What about the other comorbidities? Do you have class one heart failure, that’s now class three and you’re retaining fluid? And that’s why you’re short of breath and you actually need an echo and a cardiologist and an evaluation of your diuresis. So, I think that’s important, but the key is don’t blow it off, right? So, increasing symptom in MPN is telling you something isn’t right, and we need to check it out.   

Katherine Banwell:

Right, and for the patient, tell your healthcare team about it.  

Dr. Pemmaraju:

Communicate always. I think what we see is people are so proper and so compassionate and so kind and collegial, and that’s beautiful. But actually in the MPNs and all these rare blood cancers where so little is known and so little is obvious, communication is the key.