Patients With CML Feel Shared Decision-Making Is Lacking, Want More Focus on QOL

Data from the Survey of Unmet Needs in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML SUN) trial show that quality of life (QOL) and shared decision-making are priorities for patients, said Fabian Lang, MD, of Goethe University Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany.

Transcript

What are some of the main points that health care providers and health systems can take away from the CML SUN trial results?

The CML SUN trial showed that, for example, fatigue is a quite present problem in these patients, which we were not much aware of. So, this is something we've got to get a handle on, which is difficult to evaluate, difficult to treat, and difficult to talk about. And what we've also seen is that doctors are mainly focused on BCR-ABL levels, which means numbers, in order to conduct and treat the patients. But, on the other hand, patients are more focused on things like quality of life, daily problems, and they are mainly focused on that. It is something which is quite true across all line of therapies.

And in the end, we also found that most of the patients do not have the feeling that a shared decision-making is taking place. So doctors tend to to tell the patients how therapy works and do not propose multiple therapies or discuss the therapies with the patients, and this is also something which comes through over all lines of therapy.