High-Risk Multiple Myeloma Patients Benefit from Aggressive Treatment

Dr. Sagar Lonial of Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute recently discussed his paper on how he treats high-risk myeloma with Dr. Neil Love of Research To Practice: An Integrated Approach to Oncology Education.

A big question for physicians, according to Dr. Lonial, was whether their patients “should they get maintenance therapy and what should they get as maintenance therapy?”  He also said “single agent maintenance therapy post auto [transplant] is not going to be sufficient.”

Two important considerations were “the importance of identifying who the high-risk people are at the time of diagnosis is important because if you miss that opportunity, you’re not going to know it until they’ve relapsed really early. The second is, make sure that you’re aggressive with their treatment and that you’re aggressive in their maintenance as well, because if you do that, you can ultimately improve their long-term outcomes.”

For high-risk patients “under treatment of myeloma is generally a bad thing.”  He added that physicians should “make sure that [they] are aggressive with…treatment and aggressive with maintenance as well…to ultimately improve…long-term outcomes.”

Watch the video interview here.