Background
Discussions regarding palliative care and end‐of‐life care issues are frequently delayed past the time of usefulness, resulting in unwanted medical care. We sought to develop a ...patient‐reported outcome (PRO) instrument that allows patients to voice their symptom burdens and facilitate timing of discussions.
Subjects, Materials, and Methods
A seven‐item PRO instrument (Cota Patient Assessed Symptom Score‐7 item CPASS‐7) covering physical performance status, pain, burden, and depression was administered (September 2015 through October 2016) with correlation to overall survival, correcting for time to complete survey since diagnosis.
Results
A total of 1,191 patients completed CPASS‐7 at a median of 560 days following the diagnosis of advanced cancer. Of these patients, 49% were concerned that they could not do the things they wanted; 35% reported decreased performance status. Financial toxicity was reported by 39% of patients, with family burdens noted in 25%. Although depression was reported by 15%, 43% reported lack of pleasure. Pain was reported by 33%. The median CPASS‐7 total symptom burden score was 16 (possible 0–112). With a median follow‐up of 15 months from initial survey, 46% had died. Patients with symptom burden scores <29 and ≥29 had a 6‐month overall survival rate of 87% and 67%, respectively, and 12‐month survival rates of 72% and 50%. A one‐point score increase resulted in a 1.8% increase in expected hazard.
Conclusion
Patients with advanced cancer with higher levels of symptom burden, as self‐reported on the CPASS‐7, had inferior survival. The PRO facilitates identification of patients appropriate for reassessment of treatment goals and potentially palliative and end‐of‐life care in response to symptom burden concerns.
Implications for Practice
A seven‐item patient‐reported outcome (PRO) instrument was administered to 1,191 patients with advanced cancers. Patients self‐reporting higher levels of physical and psychological symptom burden had inferior overall survival rates. High individual item symptom PRO responses should serve as a useful trigger to initiate supportive interventions, but when scores indicate global problems, discussions regarding end‐of‐life care might be appropriate.
Discussions regarding palliative care and end‐of‐life care issues are often delayed past the time of usefulness, resulting in unwanted medical care. This article reports the results of a multicenter study with a patient‐reported outcome tool used with more than 1,000 patients with advanced cancers to assess the association between patient symptom burdens distress and overall survival.
Introduction
Cognitive computing point‐of‐care decision support tools which ingest patient attributes from electronic health records and display treatment options based on expert training and medical ...literature, supplemented by real world evidence (RWE), might prove useful to expert and novice oncologists. The concordance of augmented intelligence systems with best medical practices and potential influences on physician behavior remain unknown.
Methods
Electronic health records from 88 breast cancer patients evaluated at a USA tertiary care center were presented to subspecialist experts and oncologists focusing on other disease states with and without reviewing the IBM Watson for Oncology with Cota RWE platform.
Results
The cognitive computing “recommended” option was concordant with selection by breast cancer experts in 78.5% and “for consideration” option was selected in 9.4%, yielding agreements in 87.9%. Fifty‐nine percent of non‐concordant responses were generated from 8% of cases. In the Cota observational database 69.3% of matched controls were treated with “recommended,” 11.4% “for consideration”, and 19.3% “not recommended.” Without guidance from Watson for Oncology (WfO)/Cota RWE, novice oncologists chose 75.5% recommended/for consideration treatments which improved to 95.3% with WfO/Cota RWE. The novices were more likely than experts to choose a non‐recommended option (P < .01) without WfO/Cota RWE and changed decisions in 39% cases.
Conclusions
Watson for Oncology with Cota RWE options were largely concordant with disease expert judged best oncology practices, and was able to improve treatment decisions among breast cancer novices. The observation that nearly a fifth of patients with similar disease characteristics received non‐recommended options in a real world database highlights a need for decision support.
Cognitive computing point‐of‐care decision support tools which ingest patient attributes from electronic health records and display treatment options based on expert training and medical literature, supplemented by real world evidence, might prove useful to expert and novice oncologists. We compared recommendations from one platform and noted concordance with disease expert opinions. The platform was also able to influence novice oncologists in test cases. Since nearly a fifth of similar real world cases received non‐recommended therapies. Our study demonstrates a need for decision support tools.
In this article, we report on 904 patients undergoing transplantation for follicular lymphoma. A total of 176 (19%) received allogeneic, 131 (14%) received purged autologous, and 597 (67%) received ...unpurged autologous transplants. Five-year treatment-related mortality (TRM) rates were 30%, 14%, and 8% and 5-year recurrence rates were 21%, 43%, and 58% after allotransplantation, purged autotransplantation, and unpurged autotransplantation, respectively. In multivariate analyses, allotransplantation had higher TRM and lower disease recurrence. Purged autotransplantation had a 26% lower recurrence risk than unpurged autotransplantation. Five-year probabilities of survival were 51%, 62%, and 55% after allogeneic, purged autotransplantation, and unpurged autotransplantation, respectively. Advanced age, prolonged interval from diagnosis to transplantation, high lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), refractory disease, bone marrow involvement, low performance scores, and transplantation between 1990 and 1993 were associated with adverse outcomes. Total body irradiation was associated with higher TRM but lower recurrence. There was no association between acute or chronic graft-versus-host disease and recurrence after allotransplantation. We conclude that both allogeneic and autologous transplantation can induce durable remissions. There may be a benefit to graft purging in autologous transplantation. The decreased recurrence after allotransplantation is offset by increased TRM. We did not detect a correlation between graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and recurrence. Finally, outcomes of transplantation for follicular lymphoma show improvement over the past decade. (Blood. 2003;102:3521-3529)
Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (ASCT) is a standard-of-care treatment for many hematologic malignancies. Progression of disease after ASCT is the primary cause of treatment ...failure. In this Phase Ib trial, we studied the safety and clinical effect of combined checkpoint inhibition therapy (CPIT) with ipilimumab and nivolumab as a consolidation strategy after ASCT for patients with high-risk diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), mature T cell lymphoma (TCL), and multiple myeloma (MM). Starting at 14 to 28 days after ASCT, patients received ipilimumab (1 mg/kg i.v. on day 1 of weeks 1, 4, 7, 10, 16, and 22) and nivolumab (3 mg/kg i.v. on day 1 of weeks 1, 4, 7, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, and 26). Patients received a median of 5 doses of ipilimumab and 8 doses of nivolumab. Thirty-five patients were included in the intent-to-treat population. Ninety-four percent of the patients experienced immune-related adverse events (irAEs) of any grade. Ninety-seven percent of irAEs resolved spontaneously or after holding study drugs and instituting high-dose corticosteroid therapy. Progression-free and overall survival at 18 months post-ASCT for each disease cohort were 85.7% and 100% for primary refractory DLBCL, 28.6% and 57.1% for relapsed DLBCL, not evaluable and 80% for frontline TCL, 25% and 75% for relapsed TCL, 57.1% and 87% for high-risk transplant-naïve MM, and 40% and 100% for MM relapsed within 3 years of first ASCT. We conclude that combined CPIT appears to be tolerable as a consolidation strategy after ASCT and in addition to the potential clinical efficacy observed in some subsets of disease, T cell receptor repertoire, T regulatory cell phenotype, and gut microbiota profiles provide a biologic rationale warranting further study of this approach.
Value-based payment reforms shift cost-containment responsibilities to the physician. Although gene expression profiling (GEP) utilizing a 21-gene panel among patients with early-stage, axillary ...lymph node-negative, hormone receptor-positive, HER2/neu oncogene-negative breast cancer is able to identify a cohort that may achieve excellent outcomes without adjuvant chemotherapy, high up-front costs (list price, $4175) could dissuade usage.
Retrospective review of consecutive patients with breast cancer treated at a single cancer center.
Chart review of 227 patients 70 years or younger with outpatient costs (ie, drug average sales price, reagent costs, physician charges) during first 6 months of treatment.
Of these patients, 68% underwent GEP, with 52%, 43%, and 5% having low, intermediate, and high recurrence risk scores, respectively. Adjuvant chemotherapy was utilized less in genomically profiled cohorts (19% vs 29%; P = .08) and was consistent with recommendations of the recurrence scores. The mean 6-month outpatient costs were $24,955 with adjuvant chemotherapy and $2654 with hormonal therapy. Patients with stage II cancer undergoing GEP received adjuvant chemotherapy at a lower frequency (28.6% vs 86.7%), but patients with stage I cancer who underwent testing were slightly more likely to receive chemotherapy (15.8% vs 14%) because the test identified patients with higher-risk tumors. Universal GEP testing of patients with stage II cancer would have resulted in net savings of $11,494 per patient inclusive of test cost; stage I testing would have increased costs by $4505. Similar trends for grade 2/3 tumors (-$2394) and grade 1 tumors (+$6047) were noted.
Universal GEP testing of women 70 years or younger with stage II or grade 2/3 lymph node-negative breast cancers would result in lower outpatient costs, inclusive of the diagnostic test, within the first 6-month episode of care.
Efforts to reduce relapse of non-Hodgkin lymphoma after autologous transplantation have included ex vivo stem cell selection and/or peritransplantation immunotherapy. The late infectious and ...immunologic consequences of these maneuvers are not well understood, although an increase in early cytomegaloviral disease after CD34+ stem cell selection and an alteration in immunoglobulin and T-cell recovery after peritransplantation rituximab has been noted. We report the first 2 cases of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy caused by JC papovavirus after autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation and a case each of cytomegalovirus retinitis and pneumonitis. All 4 patients experienced significant impairment of CD4 T-cell recovery, placing them at risk for these unusual viral infections. The clustering of cases is concerning because all occurred shortly after the introduction of peritransplantation rituximab into treatment protocols (4 of 62 immunotherapy recipients compared with 0 of 276 without; z = 3.595;P < .001), although a direct association with this CD20 B-cell–directed therapy remains speculative.
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