[johanna]

Does disease burden before transplant matter?

by johanna on Sun Nov 03, 2013 2:29 pm

Does it make a difference how much disease burden is left before we go to a stem cell transplant?

What is the best figure the patient should hope for, when aggressive Light Chain Multiple Myeloma and heading towards the transplant ?

Oncologist says, as long as it does not shoot over 1000 LC it's good and the transplant can be done. So is it the same if you go into it with 200 kappa LC i suppose to 950 kLC ?

We found a clinic that helped us and very very encouraging results for Ian. No chemo. Hyper­thermia (whole body). But our questions is:

Is it worth trying to lower the marker as much as we can before the transplant? And why?
Will the mephalan given not wipe all bone marrow anyway?

[Dr. Jason Valent]

Re: Does disease burden before transplant matter?

by Dr. Jason Valent on Sun Nov 03, 2013 4:27 pm

Our institution generally tries to have at least a 50% reduction in the light chain and less than 30% plasma cells in bone marrow prior to transplant. This is not a hard and fast rule. Generally speaking, the better the initial response to treatment going into transplant, the better [longer] the post-transplant remission.