News From Paris: Another Exciting Day at IMW!

Submitted by Medical Director on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 12:08

Today was another fantastic morning of data and discussion at IMW. This morning's session, Newly Diagnosed Myeloma > 65 Years of Age, Facts and Questions was kicked off by S. Vincent Rajkumar's discussion on his personal view of treatment strategies in this population. This was followed by an update from all of the cooperative groups on the important questions being examined in their ongoing clinical trials.

The basic areas of disagreement and questions currently being evaluated in randomized clinical trials are two-fold: 1) Is 65 years of age the appropriate cut-off age? ...More importantly, is physiological age more important than chronological age when determining the appropriate cut-off?  Vincent commented that he considers a patient to be “ineligible for a transplant” rather than an “elderly” patient, as there are comorbidities that must be taken into account when making transplant recommendations. 2) Should you provide older patients a triplet regime rather than a two drug regime? While all of the panelists hesitated to say that a triplet regime is the standard of care in older patients due to a lack of phase III RCTs, they did agree that there are individualized situations where a triplet regime should be used in this patient population. 

Nevertheless, the debate continues here at in Paris at the IMW.  Another exciting session later today will examine the emerging issue of Primary Secondary Malignancies in Myeloma.  This should make for a lively debate this afternoon, especially in light of the FDSs announcement last month.

Center of Excellence will be again be hosting an expert conference call with the faculty that will provide an in depth discussion on the most important and practice changing data for community physicians and their healthcare professional teams that will emerge from IMW. This will ultimately be summarized in the ongoing Faulty Perspectives Series.

Be sure to register today to receive all of the certified CME/CE activities produced by Center of Excellence at www.coexm.com.