What is watch and wait? Why would I wait to treat my MDS? In medicine, not just MDS or even cancer in general, there's always a balance of benefits and risk. So we always want to do something that gives a patient more benefit compared to the risk or side effect that it comes with that particular therapy. So MDS and low risk MDS, we categorize them into very low, low intermediate, one, two, and high, very high risk. So all the way below intermediate risk from many clinical data out there, we know over time, for example, five, 10, 20 years, only a small portion of patients become a bit different from where they are at present moment. So if, and we know that giving therapy will not change that status in a significant manner. So the rationale is why give some therapy that may come with side effects and chemotherapy is always with some side effects. Then we won't be changing your MDS over time significantly. So why give some side effects when 10 years from now without doing anything, we know it will be about the same, or at least we know there's a pretty low risk that it will become something more aggressive. So whenever we think the side effects or the risk outweighs the benefit that we're giving to a patient, we try not to intervene. We want to give you a patient as much therapy as possible because that's what we do, but it's just not for the benefit for everyone. Thank you.
HealthTree • September 1, 2023