Use of CME (Continuing Medical Education) to impact self-reported changes in the evaluation and management of anaemia in geriatric patients: An important topic for those of us with CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia)

Honestly, most of my fellow family doctors (FP) know very little hematology. This may be even more true of other primary care providers.

The ABFM board exams for family doctors dedicated a whopping 1% of all the questions to hematology- that is for everything from a simple iron deficiency anemia to a life threatening acute leukemia. Not much incentive to become expert.

As one of the few FP who lives and breathe heme with a deep and abiding personal stake in making sure that all things blood related are done right, and also as doctor with a long background in teaching, in fact a masters of science degree in Medical Education (all my initials are MDCM FCFP, DABFP, MS Ed), this publication on teaching my colleagues about the importance of anemia in the elderly and all the work that lead up to it definitely was a topic in my wheelhouse.

I was lucky to be involved in all ages of this effort: helped with the content development and served as faculty for all the live presentations to thousands of primary care providers across the country and worked on the very cool mobile app: Anemia Algorithm. Click here for the iPhone and here for the Android downloads (>15,000 total downloads). Finally I co-authored what culimated in the actual peer reviewed publication. 

The take away message of all our educational effort is that anemia (or if you prefer the British: anaemia) is not a normal part of aging, shouldn't be ignored and is often related to bone marrow issues that can be helped by a hematologist. 

Sadly, MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome) is too often missed by my fellow doctors. MDS are a group of bone marrow disorders in which the bone marrow is dysfunctional, cancerous, and does not produce adequate healthy blood cells resulting in either anemia or infections or bleeding problems or in more difficult cases,  dangerous combination of all three, depending on what hematopoietic stem cell line or lines are effected. This is an increasingly real and common concern for us CLL patients as we live longer, especially those of us who have had chemotherapy. Past history of chemotherapy is a long recognized risk factor for developing MDS. Please take a listen to this ASH 2012 prior post on CLL and MDS from one of my co-authors, Dr. David Steensma who is a recognized world expert on MDS and geriatric anemia. My other co-authors are Jill Hays and Kathy Farmer with whom I worked at Primary Care Network on CME, and Betsy Dennison who besides doing CME and patient education, works with the CLL Society. I am lucky to be part of such a fine team of researchers and educators.

We wanted to measure if we made a difference through continuing medical education in patients' lives, and looks like we did. That is the subject of our publication.

Subsequently, I have stepped away from much of what I do in non-CLL related medical education to be able to volunteer more of my time to the nonprofit CLL Society, but I wanted to share some of the past work that I have done to educate my fellow doctors over the past several years. I am very proud of these educational endeavors and they clearly inform all that I do on the blog and even more so now on our new website, CLLSociety.org. The new website is dedicated to educational efforts that move the bar higher by first surveying and assessing what is needed in the CLL community, teaching to those needs and following up to see if we made impact.

As a doctor, a patient and an educator, I and the rest of the CLL Society team try to reach beyond journalism to education, support, research, and advocacy, not just posting pleasant videos that report good news, but digging to point out the good and bad that might have serious treatment implications for us CLL patients. We have an vision: smart patients get smart care.

ASH 2014: Interview with Dr. Susan O'Brien and Dr. Bruce Cheson on CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia)

There is much to report from ASH 2014, and this sweet interview from Medscape offers a short synopsis of some of the highlights.

Over the coming weeks I plan to fill in the details with more comments and videos, but this is a nice and succinct place to start.

There are some priceless moments, thanks to the wise and dry humor of Dr. Cheson and the honest and patient centric attitude of Dr. O'Brien.

First, right up front, I really appreciate that Dr. Cheson points out just how out of date are even the most recent CLL guidelines that were developed only a few years ago.

Are you listening, community oncologists? The published CLL guidelines are out of date.

I am glad he also asked about the secondary malignancies with chemo-immunotherapy, a question too often swept under the carpet in many presentation on CLL treatment. We know there is a small but real risk of MDS or myelodysplastic syndrome (for an explanation of the relationship of MDS and CLL from Dr. Steensma, click here), a difficult to treat form of cancer that presents as bone marrow failure, that may come along as a late and serious complication with FCR (fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and rituximab), but we don't have much data yet on the risk with BR (bendamustine and rituximab).  Because bendamustine is a DNA damaging alkylating agent similar to chlorambucil (Leukeran) and cyclophosphamide (the C in FCR), it is likely that MDS will also present as a late, but hopefully infrequent ugly complication after BR.

What we do know already is that now that we are living longer with our CLL, we are getting more secondary cancers (click here for a reminder of our risks), especially blood cancers.

Don't miss Dr. Cheson's hand gesture when Dr. O'Brien talks about the minority of patients that do so very well on FCR, a topic that we have visited here more than once (click here to hear Dr. Hallek at  iwCLL discuss who gets the most benefit from FCR).

Another highlight comes right after the honest discussion of the follow up important trial of the two old school chemo-immunotherapies that are duking it out for supremacy in the CLL world, namely the  FCR versus BR (for more on this trial from Dr. Sharman click here). After Dr. O'Brien's honest and upbeat response, Dr. Cheson asks her, quite properly in this era of new treatment options: Do we care?

Yet another interesting moment occurs when he asks Dr. O'Brien to choose between ibrutinib, idelalisib, and ABT-199: If they were all available: Which one would you pick?

She refuses to answer.

Their discussion on the meaning of minimal residual disease or MRD negativity in the era of novel therapies is both informative about what we know but even more so about what we don't know.

Only time and trials will help sort al this out.

Dr. O'Brien has her own hand gesture when she describes just how much above 50% was the progression free survival curve for ABT-199 at 18 months. We need more data. And more time to sort this all out.

I wish I had produced this video. I don't usually see the role of my blog to share what is already available on other websites, but this is good stuff and there was much in it that cried out for commentary and context. I wanted everyone who reads my blog to have the link with it here.

Please enjoy this Medscape Interview:

CLL: It's the Best -- and Most Confusing -- of Times

Thanks for your help and support.

                                          

ASH 2012: Dr. David P Steensma: Myelodysplastic Syndrome with a Focus on Secondary MDS in CLL

Dr. David Steensma is a world leader in not only basic laboratory and clinical research on MDS, but also in examining the impact that anemia has on the life of older patients.

MDS or myelodysplastic syndrome is bone marrow failure and in a minority cases, turns into an acute leukemia.

It is not an uncommon complication of CLL, both, as Dr. Steensma explains, secondary to the genetic and epigenetic changes inherent in the disease itself, and to the treatments, especially the alkylating agents that damage the DNA. In CLL, these included chlorambucil (Leukeran), cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan or the C in FCR), and bendamustine (Treanda).

This is a strong argument for younger patients to avoid those drugs known to damage the bone marrow, but Dr. Steensma offers some more subtle analysis and advice.

We also discuss the radiation risk of MDS from all those CT scans we get in clinical trials.

A good friend of mine is now more than two years out post transplant at MDACC for his CLL/MDS combo one-two knockout punch and he is doing great with no molecular evidence of either disease (MRD negative). And very little graft versus disease.  You can read his story at this link.

This is my last video interview from ASH 2012, but ASCO is just around the corner with more news and interviews.

Dr. Steensma clarifies and explains the risk of MDS in simple terms.

Einstein is quoted as saying: "Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Dr. Steensma does exactly that.

ASH 2012: Dr. Richard Furman Discusses What is Known and What Isn't About the New Treatments in Trials

In the final part of Dr. Furman's interview from ASH 2012, the doctor who had the most early experience with GS-1101 (idelasilib) and ibrutinib discusses the still limited experience of disease progression with these new small molecules. He reminds of the real risks of bone marrow damage (MDS) and transformation to a more aggressive cancer (Richter's) and offers an interesting hypothesis on why Richter's might be found more often with these treatments.

He reviews the open pivotal for idelasilb (GS1101) and the associated crossovers, plus the trial for ibrutinib versus ofatumumab.

But there are other trials out there too that he didn't mention, especially for patients in special categories, such as 17p deletion or age  > 65.

So always remember to check what clinical trials might be a fit for you at http://clinicaltrials.gov when you are considering treatment. Don't count on your doctor to know all the latest. See my prior post on clinical trials.

Dr. Furman candidly outlines what is known and not known about how these drugs work.

What I really like is the strategy he outlines of using these drugs one after another as stepping stones to a normal life expectancy.



More to come from ASH 2012.