Factors Correlating With Survival in Polycythemia Vera

Carole Miller, MD, director of the Cancer Institute at Ascension Saint Agnes, discusses notable factors which correlated with survival for patients with polycythemia vera (PV) in the REVEAL study (NCT02252159).

While the overall survival for patients with PV is estimated to be 20 years, uncertainty remains regarding what factors that impact mortality within this patient population. To address this clinical question, an analysis was designed within the phase 4 study to examine mortality and causes of death in patients with PV.

Patients aged 18 years or older with a life expectancy below 6 months were enrolled, including those who had a history of or an active plan to proceed to allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant within 3 months, and those who had a splenectomy.

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0:08 | Significantly more patients who died in the study were characterized as high-risk at diagnosis. That makes sense, but it was primarily due to age. There wasn't a clear difference between the patients who died and were alive at the time about whether they had thromboembolic events prior to enrollment. Patients who died had higher symptom scores at all the different time points. Patients were screened about every 3 months.

0:48 | When you look at all points, the patients who died had worse symptoms than the patients who lived, but I guess that is expected. The patients who died in the 6 to 9 months with a longer follow up had significantly worse quality of life symptoms than the patients who remained alive during the course of the study. The things that pushed the increase in symptoms were generally fatigue, early satiety, difficulty concentrating, and unintentional weight loss. These were specific complaints related to polycythemia vera.