Interviews

At the end of September 2021, Freda Pyles, a resident of rural Pennsylvania, began an antibiotic for a dental infection. That set off a 6-month battle with Clostridioides difficile, which was misdiagnosed a few times before she was treated at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Here, she describes how she contracted the infection and what happened afterwards.

Preethi Venkat, MD, second-year internal medicine resident at the University of California, San Diego, discusses differences in hospitalizations for patients with irritable bowel disease (IBD) and Clostridioides difficile (C diff) infection vs those with IBD hospitalized for other reasons.

Although the Oncology Care Model (OCM) is ending June 30, 2022, it does not mean practices can turn back the clock and revert to how they provided care prior to the OCM, explained Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, executive vice president of Texas Oncology.

Christopher Thompson, MD, MSc, FASGE, FACG, AGAF, FJGES, director of endoscopy and codirector of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, discusses a session on gastrointestinal (GI) invention at the recent conference, Digestive Disease Week, held May 21-24 in San Diego, California.

Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, executive vice president of Texas Oncology, discusses the path of telemedicine reimbursement during the pandemic and possible ways it will change after the pandemic.

Snoring affects not only the person who is snoring, but their partners as well, said Michael Johnson, CEO of Rhinomed.

We need more educational or clinical projects that have a real-world impact on reducing disparities in dermatology, said Art Papier, MD, dermatologist, CEO, VisualDx.

Zahra Mahmoudjafari, PharmD, BCOP, clinical pharmacy manager at the University of Kansas Health System, catalogues the chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapies that are coming down the pipeline.

It is important that we learn how to exploit DNA damage repair deficiencies to treat cancer help patients in control their disease. explained Hatem Soliman, MD, medical director, Clinical Trials Office, Moffitt Cancer Center.

Bruce House in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, has been serving individuals living with HIV and AIDS for 34-plus years. Here we speak with Patrick Morley, office and communications coordinator.

Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, executive vice president of Texas Oncology, discusses how enhancements to telemedicine precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic have made lasting and meaningful changes to oncology care, including that these care improvements will persist post pandemic.

There needs to be an emphasis on how to reduce the cost and burden of real-world evidence studies, said Patricia Deverka, MD, MS, senior researcher and deputy director at the Center for Translational and Policy Research and Precision Medicine, University of California San Francisco.

Elaine Siegfried, MD, professor of pediatrics and dermatology, Saint Louis University Health Sciences Center, discusses therapeutic management considerations for dermatologists in consulting with diverse patients with atopic dermatitis.

Increased diversity in clinical trials remains an unmet need, and in the new SEQUOIA trial, the majority of patients being White males meant researchers could not do a subgroup analysis looking at outcomes for specific races, age groups or genders, said Mazyar Shadman, MD, MPH, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Hope S. Rugo, MD, FASCO, is professor of medicine and the director of the Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education program at the University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. She discusses her experience with palbociclib and letrozole in advanced breast cancer.

Roxana Siles, MD, FAAAAI, staff in the Department of Allergy and Immunology at Cleveland Clinic and codirector of the Asthma Center at Cleveland Clinic, address the impact of effective treatments of chronic cough on patient quality of life (QOL).

Elli Papaemmanuil, PhD, assistant professor in computational oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, spoke on current methods of classification and stratification for myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and the applicability of a novel scoring system, presented during her plenary session at EHA2022, that aims to improve and refine MDS risk estimation.

John Mascarenhas, MD, director of the Adult Leukemia Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, spoke on preliminary data findings of the phase 2 MANIFEST study investigating the efficacy and safety profile of pelabresib, ruxolitinib combination therapy in JAK inhibitor-naive patients with myelofibrosis and those with suboptimal response to ruxolitinib monotherapy.

Mandy Lauw, MD, PhD, physician scientist and chair of the YoungEHA committee, discussed the content presented at the YoungEHA Research Meeting at the 2022 European Hematology Association (EHA) Congress and core themes of the session she cochaired on the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) and science in hematology.

Swaminathan P. Iyer, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains the mechanism of action and efficacy/safety observed in phase 1 results of CTX130, a CD70-targeted allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, in the treatment of relapsed/refractory T-cell lymphoma.

Amanda Ely is CEO of the Children’s HIV Association (CHIVA), an organization that provides support to children living with HIV in the United Kingdom and Ireland and their families.

Designing rational spending targets and having small sample sizes are 2 main challenges payers and partners face in the shift toward alternative payment models (APMs), said Ravi B. Parikh, MD, MPP, assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy, assistant professor of medicine, University of Pennsylvania.

Constantine S. Tam, MBBS, MD, consulting hematologist and associate professor, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, explains findings of his abstract at EHA2022 showing the impact of Australia’s pharmaceuticals benefit scheme on the rise of Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor prescriptions for the treatment of relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (R/R CLL), as well as reasons behind the decrease in fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and rituximab combination therapy usage for first-line CLL.

Providing insurance coverage for multicancer early detection (MCED) tests is vital to reduce disparities in access, said Patricia Deverka, MD, MS, senior researcher, deputy director at the Center for Translational and Policy Research and Precision Medicine, University of California San Francisco.

Mazyar Shadman, MD, MPH, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington, discussed positive health-related quality of life (HRQOL) findings of the SEQUOIA trial investigating zanubrutinib vs bendamustine/rituximab in the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma (CLL/SLL).

Sravanthi Parasa, MD, gastroenterologist at Swedish Gastroenterology, talks about innovations in gastroenterology technology.

Many socioeconomic factors, such as neighborhood factors, access to care, and education can influence sleep, explained Cinthya Pena Orbea, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Cleveland Clinic.

Ashok Subramanian, MBA, founder and chief executive officer, Centivo, speaks on the limitations of traditional employer-based health benefit plans in the pursuit of value-based care and what employers should consider in designing these incentives on a community level.

Once-nightly sodium oxybate was associated with a statistically significant reduction in cataplexy episodes among patients with narcolepsy, explained Michael Thorpy, MD, director of the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center and professor of neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Moving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies outside of the hospital will bring training and safety challenges, said Aklilu Tedla, vice president, insights and engagement, regulatory science, cell and gene, Cardinal Health.