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What is the role of imaging in myeloma care?
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• May 27, 2020
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What is the role of imaging in myeloma care? So medical imaging is highly effective in accurately diagnosing myeloma, in staging of myeloma, and also in treatment management to monitor if the treatment is working at a whole body level. The more sensitive imaging technique we use, the better answers we have where the disease is localized and how it is changing over the period of time. So that's a very large question because we have a lot of things that imaging can tell us. In the beginning of course we want to figure out how much bone disease a patient has. We know that 80 to 90 percent of patients with myeloma develop bone disease at one point. Most of them actually 80 percent have it at first diagnosis already. So imaging shows us where the bone disease happens, where the bone destruction is happening. If there's a risk for fracture, if there's more areas where we have to be concerned, where we have to maybe do surgery, do radiation, do chiroplasty. So that's what's at the beginning. Later on it's very important to see the bone marrow involvement, how much is left after treatment for example. We also know that it's prognostically significant how much a patient has at the first diagnosis, but it's also very important to see what is left after treatment because we know that those areas might be a reason for a relapse where the disease comes back and where we see development of new myeloma. So those are the major things. And then at relapse again the same as at first diagnosis. Is there any change in the bone disease? Is there something new? Is there something that is concerning for fractures?

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