Managing Patients With Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

Alessandra Ferrajoli, MD, hematologist/oncologist, associate professor of medicine, Department of Leukemia, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the importance of supportive care in the management of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) with comorbidities.

Ferrajoli presented on this topic and more during a session that she was a part of at the 2024 Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO) Annual Meeting.

In addition, she highlights some of the key strategies that she believes should be integrated when managing and treating patients with CLL.

Transcription:

0:09 | ​​There are several things that we can do to optimize care [of patients with CLL]. For cardiovascular comorbidity, it is very important to do a cardiac workup and work very closely with cardio oncologists so that they can tell us whether the treatment of the cardiovascular comorbidity is optimized, and so they can also give us their expert opinion on whether those patients are fit to receive certain type of therapies.

0:37 | Another very important point, in my view, is to make sure that the patients are up to date on their immunizations, because there [are] data that show that once you start treatment, your ability to respond to immunization is lessened. So, it is important that patients receive their pneumonia vaccination, their shingle vaccination, and whenever it is possible, the seasonal ones, such as flu or COVID-19, before they start treatment, so that they optimize whatever is their ability to then respond to those infection and it is the same thing is for cancer screening. It is very important that before we start the treatment for our patients, we make sure they are up to date on their cancer screening so that we do not have to deal with 2 problems at the same time.