Dr Ruben Mesa on Calculating Health-Related Quality of Life for Patients With MPNs

Symptoms of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) have a large impact on quality of life for patients and it is important to be able to link them, said Ruben Mesa, MD, director of UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Transcript

What is the quality of life model your team developed for patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms? What does it utilize and how does it gauge quality of life?

So, our team had looked at a range of data that we have acquired over the time with survey research looking at mathematical models of quality of life and drivers of quality of life. Looking at age, looking at comorbidities, looking at MPN-related symptoms.

What we found, interestingly, is the MPN symptoms were one of the primary drivers of the health-related quality of life for patients—even more so than age, even more so than comorbidities, even significant comorbidities. So, I think many reasons for that: the symptoms are both difficult but they’re incredibly chronic.

So, if you have difficult itching that is almost 24/7, you can imagine what an impact that has on you. Or if you have splenomegaly and really can’t find a comfortable position to sleep, and have chronic insomnia, that takes an enormous impact on your quality of life in a very rapid way. So, that mathematical model helps to demonstrate aspects of that and that important linkage analysis.