What other supportive therapies may I be receiving in addition to the CLL treatment?

What other supportive therapies may I be receiving in addition to my CLL treatment?

This is a this is a really exciting, conversation that I like to have with my patients even after we first meet. But fortunately, most of my patients will not die from their CLL. So it's important to think about other things outside the disease itself that we need to watch out for. And pay close attention to. Three things that I closely watch and discuss with my patients are one, risk for infections, two, secondary cancers, and three, they're cardiovascular health and cardiovascular risk. So one, when it comes to infections, CLL patients are at high risk for infection, whether they're on treatment or not on treatment. So the two things that we always talk about is staying up to date on vaccinations. We know that vaccinations, decrease the risk of bad things happening when you get infections. The other thing that we closely monitor are antibody levels. So I will follow our IgG antibodies routinely. All my patients for those that have low IgG levels and recurrent infections, ask your doctor if you may benefit from antibody replacement therapy, which can lower the risk of severe infections in patients. So when it comes to secondary malignancies, CLL patients are high risk for other types of cancers, most commonly skin cancer. So I make sure that they stay up to date with the dermatologists and do a yearly skin check. We also make sure that our patients are up to date on other secondary cancer screenings, like colon cancer screening and breast cancer screening. Just to make sure that we're staying on top of everything else. And last, I think we can't forget about other comorbid conditions or other medical conditions like high blood pressure or heart disease, that we need to make sure we're staying on top of throughout a patient's CLL course. So these are really important things to talk about and things to consider.