These guidelines titled ‘Essential thrombocythemia: 2024 update on diagnosis, risk stratification, and management’ have just been released. They are a collaboration between the American haematologist Professor Tefferi and Italian haematologists Professor Vannucchi and Dr Barbui.
For a direct link to these comprehensive 2024 guidelines, see HERE.
We have also put a link onto our ‘MPN guidelines and articles‘ page.
Every year, the international MPN Advocates Network holds an MPN patient conference featuring many international MPN experts discussing the latest developments in MPN management.
The videos include:
All these videos as well as fascinating discussions about MPN advocacy and Q&A sessions are available HERE.
With thanks to the MPN Advocates Network.
The Leukaemia Foundation has provided a very interesting webinar for blood cancer patients about ageing and blood cancer.
The full video of the webinar is now available HERE.
The guest speaker was Dr Ranjana Srivastava OAM
Dr Srivastava is an internationally renowned oncologist, Fulbright scholar and award-winning writer. She is a recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia for her contribution to the field of doctor-patient communication. She specialises in the care of older patients with cancer.
The webinar covered:
The Leukaemia Foundation runs webinars for blood cancer patients. The latest is titled ‘Fear of cancer recurrence’, and also deals with the fear of progression, which is more relevant in the case of MPN patients.
It is presented by clinical psychologist Dr Charlotte Tottman and is very informative.
It is now available to watch HERE.
MPN specialist haematologists, the USA’s Ayalew Tefferi and Italy’s Tiziano Barbui have just released a very extensive overview of polycythemia vera.
The overview is detailed and includes:
The article appears in the American Journal of Hematology and is open sourced and can be accessed HERE.
If you’d like to see more articles on polycythemia vera, our guidelines page can be accessed HERE.
MPN specialists Professor Claire Harrison, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust from the UK, Professor Jean-Jacques Kiladjian, Saint Louis Hospital, Paris, and Alessandro Rambaldi, MD, University of Milan have collaborated to provide an up to the minute roundtable series on management of polycythemia vera (PV). (Courtesy of the Oncology Learning Network).
Each video includes an accompanying transcript.
Part 1: Hematocrit control and cardiovascular assessment – HERE
Part 2: Aims of treatment and choice of appropriate first-line therapy – HERE.
Part 3: Identifying when first-line therapy for PV might be failing – HERE
Part 4: Second-line therapy and reviewing data on Ruxolitinib – HERE
A recent presentation from MPN specialists Professor Jean-Jacques Kiladjian, Saint Louis Hospital, Paris, and Professor Claire Harrison, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust from the UK discusses the importance of maintaining hematocrit control in patients with polycythemia vera (PV) as well as monitoring cardio-vascular health.
The discussion, part 1 of an expert roundtable series, is wide ranging and covers the risk factors for patients with polycythemia vera.
Of particular interest is the manner in which cardiovascular health is treated by Professor Kiladjian’s team in Paris.
Claire Harrison: “Jean-Jacques, we’ve recently been looking across some PV patients and thinking about how do we do cardiovascular risk stratification and assessment. I found out that we do this in a slightly different way, and I think you do it in the best way, so tell us how you do that in Hospital Saint-Louis.”
Jean-Jacques Kiladjian: “I’m not sure it’s better, but, yeah, it’s different. Well, we have a quite aggressive and proactive attitude regarding cardiovascular assessment of all patients with PV regardless of age. Obviously the older they are, they’re usually already followed by a cardiologist sometimes or they already had some cardiovascular events.
But even in younger patients with absolutely no history of cardiovascular events, we frequently refer them to a cardiologist, not any cardiologist, but a cardiologist that knows what we are looking for, that these patients are at high risk of cardiovascular problems in the future, that they will be followed for decades and we need this proper assessment.
At least an echocardiogram, doppler of arteries, peripheral arteries, is performed. We ask to perform that for almost every patient at baseline and then regularly every 2 to 3 years in patients without any risk factors, more frequently if needed. So yes, we have a quite very proactive attitude against these additional factors because we also noticed that—and maybe this is a field for the future as Alessandro said—that it’s not exactly maybe the same risk factors for arterial versus venous thrombotic events.
Maybe some characteristics of the disease, of the patients, may predispose more to arterial events that are more dangerous for the patients like myocardial infarction, stroke, et cetera, and these risk factors may be different. And the cardiovascular, let’s say landscape of the patient at baseline is very important to avoid and to prevent these arterial events.”
The full presentation with transcript is available HERE.
The American Society of Hematology’s journal Blood, this month features a review series of articles about myeloproliferative neoplasms.
The articles describe the latest advances in the world’s understanding of MPNs. All except the article on ET are open access to read in full.
An online forum was recently held in the UK focusing on ‘Menopause, hormone replacement therapy and myeloproliferative neoplasms.’
The panel included Debra Holloway, Nurse Consultant Gynaecology, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Professor Claire Harrison, who is an MPN expert haematologist, and Advanced Nurse Practitioner Claire Woodley also from Guys & St Thomas’ hospital.
This video is available with thanks to the UK’s MPN Voice which provides wonderful information to MPN patients in the UK and more broadly.
PLEASE NOTE: There were some technical issues with the sound quality during a very small part of the video.
Reflections on the 2022 MPN Horizons meeting, Netanya, Israel
from Ken Young, MPN AA team member
The MPN Horizons meeting was held this year in Israel and online.
It was a great success with many excellent presentations.
Ken recommends in particular watch the sessions from Medical Session 3 which feature Dr Gabby Hobbs, the MPN AA’s Nathalie Cook OAM and Dr Ruben Mesa.
Here is the link to the videos from MPN Horizons Hybrid Conference 2022
Ken Young watches on whilst Nathalie Cook presents at the November 2022 MPN Horizons Conference in Netanya, Israel.
