Dr. Shah on the Importance of Assessing Quality of Life in Multiple Myeloma

Nina Shah, MD, a hematologist and oncologist, associate professor of medicine, Department of Medicine, at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the importance of assessing quality of life (QOL) in multiple myeloma.

Patients with multiple myeloma often have to endure multiple, sequential treatments, says Shah. Beyond the hardship of being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, patients have to attend many chemotherapy infusions, appointments, and blood draws throughout the course of their treatment. Beyond that, each therapy in multiple myeloma is associated with some level of toxicity that could include fatigue and brain fog, says Shah.

As such, assessing QOL is important to determine whether a patient’s physical and social functioning is impaired with treatment and to what extent. Notably, QOL data are often difficult to quantify, so QOL-assessment instruments are widely utilized, Shah explains.

During the 2020 ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition, Shah presented findings from an analysis of the phase 2 KarMMA trial, which showed that the BCMA-directed CAR T-cell therapy idecabtagene vicleucel led to clinically meaningful improvements in QOL for patients with triple-class refractory multiple myeloma.