What is the Pandemic's Impact on Myeloma Management and Treatment?
Dr. Joshua Richter presents the results of pandemic’s influence on multiple myeloma management, treatment patterns, and provider contact with patients based from insights from the Connect® MM Registry
Abstract title:
Impact of COVID-19 on Treatment Patterns and Management of Multiple Myeloma: Insights from the Connect® MM Registry
Purpose of the trial:
The COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted health care delivery systems throughout the United States (US). In-person clinical office visits were postponed or replaced by telehealth as a measure to reduce the spread of COVID-19 (Health and Human Services. ASPR TRACIE. 2021). The pandemic’s influence on multiple myeloma (MM) management, treatment patterns, and provider contact with patients has not yet been well studied. The Connect® MM Registry is a large, US, multicenter, prospective observational cohort study of patients with newly diagnosed MM. Real-world data (RWD) from the Connect MM Registry were evaluated to assess the impact of COVID-19 by examining baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and the rates of clinical visits in both pre– and during–COVID-19 periods.
Video summary:
Adult patients with MM were enrolled from 250 community, academic, and government sites. Patients for this analysis were from two different time periods from the Connect MM Registry: pre–COVID-19 from January 2018 – February 2020 and during–COVID-19 from March 2020 – August 2021. Descriptive analyses were further stratified by line of therapy (LOT) number [second-line (2L), third-line (3L), fourth-line (4L), and fifth-line (5L)]. Baseline characteristics and treatment patterns were summarized by LOT and COVID-19 time period. Office/clinic/laboratory visits were defined as any in-person visit to a physician’s office, clinic, or a laboratory. In-person scheduled office visits were defined as a quarterly scheduled office visit for which patients attended in-person. Non–in-person scheduled office visits were defined as any interaction with a patient or their family member through telephone, email, or mail. Paired t tests were used to compare changes in above incidence rates between pre– and during–COVID-19 time periods. Additionally, a mixed-model with double repeated measures on periods and LOTs was used to analyze above event rates between two COVID-19 time periods. A log transformation was also applied as needed.
Conclusion:
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial impact on the management of MM. RWE from the Connect MM Registry revealed that whereas treatment patterns were generally similar pre– and during–COVID-19, an increased uptake occurred in anti-CD38 agents, mainly daratumumab, in the latter time period. Whether this uptake was attributable to COVID-19 warrants further investigation. Overall, in the during–COVID-19 period, patients attended fewer in-person office visits, completed fewer disease assessments, and had fewer office/clinic/lab visits. Additionally, patients had more non–in-person office visits, which may have been due to the increased availability/adoption of telemedicine visits during the pandemic (Anderson et al. Digital Health. 2022). Collectively, these findings indicate that COVID-19 may have had an impact on patient treatment approach, affecting how frequently a patient was seen as well as the type of therapy they received. Additional follow-up will be needed to determine the long-term impact of COVID-19 on patients with MM.
Trial information:
ASH 2022: Abstract #3612
Authors:
Joshua Richter, MD, Sikander Ailawadhi, Hans C. Lee, MD, James W. Hardin, PhD, Howard R. Terebelo, DO, Rafat Abonour, MD, Lynne I. Wagner, PhD, Brian G.M. Durie, MD, James L. Omel, MD, Mohit Narang, MD, Kathleen Toomey, MD, Robert M. Rifkin, MD, Cristina J. Gasparetto, MD, Edward Yu, ScD, Jasmeet Anand, PharmD, Liang Liu, MS, Ying-Ming Jou, PhD and Sundar Jagannath
