Latest Conference Articles

GRAIL has generated enormous innovations in oncology care over the past 2 decades and will continue this trend through exploring 1 of oncology’s biggest opportunities, early detection of cancer, said Joshua Ofman, MD, chief of Corporate Strategy and External Affairs at GRAIL Inc.

Healthcare needs to learn to adapt faster to changes, said John Frownfelter, MD, FACP, chief medical officer of Jvion.

Based off the rich data available on mavacamten efficacy within subsets of patients with non-obstructive HCM, researchers have designed the next phase of study on this select group, said Stephen Heitner, MD, director of Clinical Trials and director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center at the Oregon Health and Science University.

For patients with obstructive HCM in the PIONEER-OLE study, mavacamten was shown to improve patients' symptoms, reduce LVOT obstruction, and essentially improve myocardial efficiency, said Stephen Heitner, MD, director of Clinical Trials and director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center at the Oregon Health and Science University.

With the expansive growth of the electronic health record in the past decade, the extraction of meaningful use metrics is vital in the transition to value-based care, said Vinay Kini, MD, MS, cardiologist at the UCHealth Heart and Vascular Center–Anschutz Medical Campus.

Mavacamten is a first-in-class small-molecule therapy that reduces the contractility of cardiac muscles by binding with myosin, a protein involved in muscle contraction that is often affected by a gene mutation in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Data from EVAPORATE, presented at the 2019 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, may be the start of answering a question that has baffled the research community: just how does icosapent ethyl, sold as Vascepa, prevent heart attacks in patients with high triglycerides?

The 2013 ACC/AHA cholesterol guidelines had no significant change in lipid testing behavior, which can be potentially attributed to the varying cholesterol treatment guidelines implemented by organizations, said Sara Levintow, PhD candidate, Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By identifying patients at very high risk for atrial fibrillation, preventive measures and screening strategies can be implemented for heightened patient care, said John Pfeifer, MD, MPH, cardiologist at Geisinger Medical Center.

Sunday’s poster session at the 2019 American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, included research that addressed disparities in clinical outcomes, healthcare delivery, and access to payer coverage.

Two additional analyses have come from DAPA-HF, a trial released in September that found the sodium glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor works equally well in patients with and without diabetes in reducing cardiovascular death and heart failure (HF) events in patients with HF with reduced ejection fraction.

Results from ISCHEMIA, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, are likely to change practice guidelines, according to commenters who took part in Saturday’s packed presentation at the 2019 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Patients without diabetes who have heart failure saw signficant benefits from the sodium glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor dapagliflozin, prompting a commenter to ask not if more patients should be taking these drugs but when to start patients on them.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can be a debilitating condition that currently has no approved therapies to treat it, highlighting the impact of potential treatments like mavacamten, said Jay Edelberg, MD, PhD, senior vice president of Clinical Development at MyoKardia.

A compelling paradigm is forming in which dapagliflozin can be prescribed not only to prevent heart failure in people with type 2 diabetes, but also in the patients without diabetes, said Kiersten Combs, US vice president of Cardiovascular Metabolism at AstraZeneca.

Depending on the type of alternative payment models, it could be more difficult or easier for practices to find overlaps and participate in multiple models, said Mike Fazio, senior vice president of client services, Archway Health.

Collaboration between stakeholders and the federal government is critical to addressing underlying gaps in patient care, said Debbie Witchey, MHA, executive vice president of the Healthcare Leadership Council.

Although patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are increasingly being used to understand treatment effectiveness, there is still a lot unknown about what measures patients find most important. Two abstracts presented at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting evaluated PROs in rheumatology and how PRO measures can be used in clinical care.

Pain is common in patients with rheumatologic diseases, and 2 abstracts presented at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting analyzed opioid use in these patients, examining patient features associated with chronic use and changing opioid use patterns in the wake of the opioid epidemic.

Exercise can be a potent therapy for patients with rheumatologic diseases and can result in improvements in inflammation, disease activity score, pain, stiffness, and fatigue. However, exercise needs to be modified for these patients to address the unique barriers they may have compared with the general population, said panelists during a session at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) not only deal with functional impairment, but also pain, fatigue, and other symptoms driven by interleukin (IL)-6 levels. In a session at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting, 2 speakers examined the role of IL-6 in RA and treatment using sarilumab (Kevzara) to target and block IL-6 signals.

New technologies that can monitor sleep, track itching patterns, or assist with pain are improving outcomes and quality of life for patients with rheumatologic conditions, according to panelists at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting.

While it is too early to provide insight into whether or not the OCF model will be successful, I think its preliminary ideas are a step in the right direction, said Rani Khetarpal, MBA, vice president of Oncology Value-Based Partnerships at New Century Health.

Monotherapy was a big topic of conversation at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting, held November 8-13 in Atlanta, Georgia, and 2 abstracts highlight the efficacy of sarilumab as a monotherapy in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Since there are no cures for knee osteoarthritis (OA), exercise and weight loss remain the best first-line therapies to decrease pain and improve function, said Stephen P. Messier, PhD, professor and director of the J.B. Snow Biomechanics Laboratory at Wake Forest University.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis receiving sarilumab have lower odds of unacceptable pain and are able to reduce their dose of oral glucocorticoid; they also have lower costs per responder than most other treatments, according to a trio of abstracts presented at the American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Professionals 2019 Annual Meeting.

More and more data are being collected on people and in healthcare, patients have to believe that the data being collected is for their good and with the goal of improving their care, said John Frownfelter, MD, FACP, chief medical officer of Jvion.

Utilization management tools, such as step therapy and prior authorization, are not only time consuming for patients, but they are a burden on providers and their practices due to the time and effort spent on the process, explained Jessica Farrell, PharmD, and Madelaine Feldman, MD, FACR, during their session at 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting, held November 8-13 in Atlanta, Georgia.

While biosimilars have brought down the cost of therapies, the savings are not quite as huge as providers may have been led to believe when biosimilars were initially under development, said Elaine Husni, MD, MPH, vice chair and director of the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center in the Orthopedic and Rheumatologic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic.

A poster presented at the American Society of Nephrology's (ASN) Kidney Week 2019 sought to understand more about patient knowledge of anemia and its impact on patient quality of life, their understanding of the disease, as well as how their anemia is managed.