Health Care Delivery

When a flu season is mild, it can make developing a vaccine for the following season a bit more difficult as it can be hard to find the right match, but on the other hand, the US health system could benefit from less stress this winter given the unrelenting demands posed by COVID-19, says Leslie Kantor, PhD, MPH, chair and professor of the Department of Urban-Global Public Health, Rutgers School of Public Health.

Research presented at the Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis (RAD) Virtual Conference said dupilumab (Dupixent) is an effective and safe therapeutic option in adults, adolescents aged 6 to 11 years, and young children aged 6 months to 5 years with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis.

The findings come from an algorithm that was based on 4 criteria-based tools, including 2 widely-used measures designed to ferret out inappropriate medication prescribing in older adults.

The oral polymerization inhibitor, a first-in-class therapy for sickle cell disease, was first approved by the FDA for adults and pediatric patients 12 years of age and older in 2019.

Daniel Greer, PharmD, BCPP, clinical assistant professor, Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, speaks on how capabilities of cognitive behavioral therapy have evolved to a more user-friendly approach in the management of chronic insomnia.

Robert J. Hopkin, MD, clinical geneticist, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, provides an overview of the evolving treatment landscape in Fabry disease.

In a study published in our December issue, researchers analyzed how prescribing of the newly approved heart failure drug sacubitril/valsartan diffused across the nation.

Final results from the MASTER trial presented at this year’s 63rd Annual American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition bear out the benefits of quadruplet therapy and using minimal residual disease (MRD) status among patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (MM).

The CDC is recommending that people at risk of developing blood clots receive the Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines instead of Johnson & Johnson (J&J); the FDA lifts restrictions on mail order access to abortion pills; US health care spending more than doubled during the first year of the pandemic.

Three policies to revamp insurance consumer protections for health care delivery are explored, with highlighted areas for improvement being maternal health coverage and loosening of network adequacy requirements.

Two doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine have reduced efficacy against the Omicron variant; a federal appeals court reinstates the Biden administration’s health care worker vaccine mandate in 26 states; a new combination therapy may reduce breast cancer progression.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension is a rare form of pulmonary hypertension that poses diagnostic challenges and often comes with a delayed diagnosis.

Subcutaneous (sub-Q) administration of isatuximab plus pomalidomide may provide survival advantages for patients with relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma, making it another treatment option for this patient group.

Patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) exhibited similarly improved insomnia and quality-of-life outcomes when administered hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HNS) vs standard-of-care positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy.

An abstract presented at the 63rd Annual American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition shows that although daratumumab use in multiple myeloma holds great promise, challenges remain in the use of clinical pathways for treatment direction with the monoclonal antibody—which the investigators say may also present opportunities for change.

John Burke, MD, hematologist, Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, discussed findings of the late-breaking abstract session POLARIX presented at ASH 2021, which compared pola-R-CHP with standard-of-care R-CHOP in patients with previously untreated DLBCL.

More Americans reported skipping medical care over cost concerns; today marks the 1-year anniversary of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout; hospitals in Minnesota are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.

Frederick Locke, MD, vice chair, Department of Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy Program, co-leader, Immuno-Oncology, Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses findings of the phase 3 ZUMA-7 trial presented at ASH 2021 and how use of axicabtagene ciloleucel can be optimally applied in a real-world setting.

Sattva S. Neelapu, MD, professor and deputy department chair in the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma in the Division of Cancer Medicine at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses findings of the ZUMA-12 study examining axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel) as a first-line treatment option for high-risk patients with large B-cell lymphoma.

Mark Wildgust, PhD, vice president, Global Medical Affairs, Oncology, Janssen, speaks on progression-free survival, complete response, and overall survival benefits observed with ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel) in CARTITUDE-1 and other studies presented at the 63rd Annual American Society of Hematology Meeting and Exposition.

Andre Goy, MD, MS, chairman and executive director of the John Theurer Cancer Center, speaks on molecular features of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and how this explains differences in patient response for chemotherapy and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.

Constantine S. Tam, MBBS, MD, consulting hematologist and associate professor, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, discusses the superior safety and progression-free survival outcomes from the SEQUOIA phase 3 trial, which compared zanubrutinib with bendamustine and rituximab combination therapy in treatment-naive chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma.

Investigators discuss the humoral response to enzyme-replacement therapy in their review of the clinical picture and diagnostic confirmation of Fabry disease.

Findings about the willingness of primary care providers to prescribe artificial pancreas systems have positive implications for increasing access to and reducing disparities around this technology by alleviating the need to see a specialist.

Posters review how a patient’s neighborhood impacts access to the liver transplant waitlist and how Medicaid expansion improved waitlist mortality.

High-flow nasal therapy overcomes some of the barriers associated with noninvasive ventilation, making the novel support beneficial for patients with acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Researchers at the University of Rochester are analyzing facial muscle movements through videos taken over webcams or smartphones to train a machine learning algorithm with the hope that it can predict Parkinson disease at an earlier stage.

Results presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology show significant benefits in event-free survival, progression-free survival, and complete response over standard of care.

A case series of corrective surgeries in children with severe scoliosis due to spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 1 showed a positive success rate, but with significant postoperative complications.