Supporting Palliatve Care
evidence clearly supports the value of palliative care for patients with blood cancers,”
Dr. El-Jawahri said.
While a step in the right direction,
these results are from a single center’s
experience, she noted. There is much more
work to be done.
“We need to show – in the field of
hematologic malignancies and hematology, in general – that there can be a benefit
to incorporating palliative care in
multiple contexts and across multiple
institutions,” Dr. El-Jawahri said. “We
need more studies to show the benefits
in patients who are receiving curative
therapy, as well as in optimizing endof-life care for patients with hematologic malignancies.”
Drs. El-Jawahri and LeBlanc are
working together to open another
study looking at the potential benefit
of palliative-care integration into the
treatment of patients with highrisk leukemia. The study will focus
again on symptom management
and psychosocial support, but will
also examine optimizing end-of-life
care for patients with a high rate of
hospitalization.
palliative care into hematology has been
a slow process, and because hematologic
malignancies are relatively rare compared
with solid organ tumors, many palliativecare specialists may not be well versed in
the needs of patients with hematologic
conditions; they may require additional
training or education about HCT or
chemotherapy options, for example.
In addition, Dr. El-Jawahri expressed
concern that the a shortage of palliativecare practitioners means that not all patients with hematologic disorders will have
access to palliative-care specialists, begging
the question, “Who will provide it?”
“We need to have large trials of
palliative-care integration that will answer
questions about the cost-effectiveness of
these interventions and how much of an
additional burden they add in terms of
resource use,” Dr. El-Jawahri said. Until
that evidence is produced, patients will
need to rely on hematologists to provide
primary palliative care; for hematologists,
that means ramping up education about
these services.
Priming the Pump for Primary
Palliative Care
Some of the education will be intuitive
S:6.75”
BOSULIF is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with chronic, accelerated, or blast phase Philadelphia
chromosome–positive (Ph+) chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) with resistance or intolerance to prior therapy.
In the treatment of adult patients with Ph+ CML with resistance or intolerance to prior therapy
Everyone has a distinct profile
Consider your patient.Consider BOSULIF.
( b o s u t inib)
94
ASH Clinical News
Bosutinib (BOSULIF®) is recommended by the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in
Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) as a treatment option for patients with CML in need
of 2nd- or later-line TKI therapy.1
Study design: BOSULIF 500 mg once-daily treatment was studied in a single-arm, Phase 1/2, open-label, multicenter
trial (N=546) in patients with CP, AP, or BP CML in second line (after imatinib) or in