Contributions
Abstract: PB2369
Type: Publication Only
Background
The outstanding availability and clinical success of tyrosine kinase inhibitors has turned CML into a chronic disease in which patients need to both tolerate and adhere to continuing treatment for many years. Nonetheless this great clinical achievement has not been paralleled by a full understanding of the impact of the CML disease from the patient viewpoint. This new scenario changed both physician’s behaviour and patient’s perceptions about the disease and influence clinical decision-making. There is now evidence that patient-reported outcomes, including self-reported symptoms, might provide useful information beyond traditional disease factors.
Aims
Aim of the SOLARIS project was both to develop and investigate a simplified health-related quality-of-life (QoL) assessment to detect real-life information from the patient about the symptom burden and on the administered treatment.
Methods
Therefore 244 CML patients in chronic phase (M 60%, F 40%, median age 61yrs) were enrolled: 175 of them were on Imatinib (IM) therapy and 69 on Dasatinib (DAS), either as first or second line treatment. All patients provided written informed consent. More than 45% of them received concomitant medications; elderly patients (over 65yrs) represented 41.4% of the total population. A simplified and easy to use QoL questionnaire with 9 single-item and another with 14 single-item was given to patients receiving IM- or DAS-therapy respectively. A small cohort of patients (19) shifted from IM-therapy to DAS. Fisher exact test was performed to evaluate any possible differences between the two treatment groups (IM vs DAS).
Results
CML patients treated with IM reported a high incidence of periorbital edemas with ocular side effects (70%), muscle cramps (79%), bone and joint pain (51%), fatigue (61%). Interestingly, most of the patients receiving DAS-therapy reported fatigue as the main symptom (70%). When compared, we found that diarrhea (p=0.001), periorbital edemas with ocular side effects (p=0.00007) and muscle cramps (p=0.000006) clearly emerged among the treatment symptom burden as main differences favouring DAS, whereas no other difference among symptoms was detected. Moreover, those patients who changed to DAS showed an improvement of most of the side effects with the exception of fatigue.
Conclusion
In conclusion we are aware that our questionnaire is not validated and that some items are missing, however we believe that a short and easy to use questionnaire and real-life spontaneous questions might be helpful in understanding patients’ perception on symptom burden and treatment in CML.
Session topic: 36. Quality of life, palliative care, ethics and health economics
Keyword(s): Chronic myeloid leukemia, Patient, Quality of Life, Tyrosine kinase inhibitor
Abstract: PB2369
Type: Publication Only
Background
The outstanding availability and clinical success of tyrosine kinase inhibitors has turned CML into a chronic disease in which patients need to both tolerate and adhere to continuing treatment for many years. Nonetheless this great clinical achievement has not been paralleled by a full understanding of the impact of the CML disease from the patient viewpoint. This new scenario changed both physician’s behaviour and patient’s perceptions about the disease and influence clinical decision-making. There is now evidence that patient-reported outcomes, including self-reported symptoms, might provide useful information beyond traditional disease factors.
Aims
Aim of the SOLARIS project was both to develop and investigate a simplified health-related quality-of-life (QoL) assessment to detect real-life information from the patient about the symptom burden and on the administered treatment.
Methods
Therefore 244 CML patients in chronic phase (M 60%, F 40%, median age 61yrs) were enrolled: 175 of them were on Imatinib (IM) therapy and 69 on Dasatinib (DAS), either as first or second line treatment. All patients provided written informed consent. More than 45% of them received concomitant medications; elderly patients (over 65yrs) represented 41.4% of the total population. A simplified and easy to use QoL questionnaire with 9 single-item and another with 14 single-item was given to patients receiving IM- or DAS-therapy respectively. A small cohort of patients (19) shifted from IM-therapy to DAS. Fisher exact test was performed to evaluate any possible differences between the two treatment groups (IM vs DAS).
Results
CML patients treated with IM reported a high incidence of periorbital edemas with ocular side effects (70%), muscle cramps (79%), bone and joint pain (51%), fatigue (61%). Interestingly, most of the patients receiving DAS-therapy reported fatigue as the main symptom (70%). When compared, we found that diarrhea (p=0.001), periorbital edemas with ocular side effects (p=0.00007) and muscle cramps (p=0.000006) clearly emerged among the treatment symptom burden as main differences favouring DAS, whereas no other difference among symptoms was detected. Moreover, those patients who changed to DAS showed an improvement of most of the side effects with the exception of fatigue.
Conclusion
In conclusion we are aware that our questionnaire is not validated and that some items are missing, however we believe that a short and easy to use questionnaire and real-life spontaneous questions might be helpful in understanding patients’ perception on symptom burden and treatment in CML.
Session topic: 36. Quality of life, palliative care, ethics and health economics
Keyword(s): Chronic myeloid leukemia, Patient, Quality of Life, Tyrosine kinase inhibitor