Patrick Connor Johnson, MD, Cancer Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, discusses results from a survey assessing key attributes for physician treatment selection for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in the third-line setting or later.

This study was presented at the virtual ESMO Congress 2021.

Transcript:

Hello. My name's Dr. Patrick Connor Johnson, and I'm an attending oncologist at the Center for Lymphoma at Massachusetts General Hospital. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to discuss our abstract that's being presented at ESMO.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma is the most common non-Hodgkin lymphoma and treatment options, particularly in the third line or later setting, have been rapidly expanding in the proceeding years with the number of new different drug approvals, as well as CAR T-cell therapy.

With an expansion and these different therapy options, therapy selection has become more complex. Despite this, we actually lack data regarding the physician perspectives on selecting a treatment in the third line or later setting.

To address this gap, we aim to assess physician perspectives on key attributes for treatment selection. In respect to methods, this was a single point in time survey across multiple countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the United States of hematologists, hematology oncologists, and medical oncologists who saw at least 5 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients per month.

They were asked to rank their top 7 treatment attributes when making a therapy selection for this patient population. I want to highlight a few findings from our survey: 239 physicians were surveyed across these multiple countries, 1/3 of surveyed physicians work in the academic setting, and the vast majority made referrals to CAR T-cell therapy centers. Physicians ranked progression-free survival, overall survival, the duration of response, adverse events with therapy, the chance of achieving a complete response, rates of severe adverse events, and impact on patient quality of life as the top treatment attributes.

Conversely the frequency of administration, as well as hospitalization requirements, were uncommonly cited as important treatment attributes, both from the perspective of the physician, as well as perception from the physician of the patient's acceptability of these attributes.There were some minor variations by country, but generally there was uniform agreement on the top treatment attributes.

I do think it's important to note a couple of limitations. First, this is a single point in time survey and there are limited sample sizes in respect to individual country. Any cross-country comparisons are really very limited and challenging. It's also possible that the physician samples are not necessarily a generalizable sample across the entire representative sample of physicians in these countries. That said, ultimately, I think it's very important to gather data on factors that are important in physician treatment selection, because this is important information for the healthcare system at large, can inform a number of different groups in respect to treatment selection moving forward.

What this work emphasizes is that the efficacy, safety, and quality of life for patients are the key attributes for physician treatment selection in this patient population or diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients in the third line setting or later, and that the frequency of administration, as well as hospitalization requirements are really less important treatment attributes.

Thank you so much for your time.