Evolving Treatment Landscape in Follicular Lymphoma

A quick one today:

OncLive has a short series of short videos (3 videos, the longest being a little over 2 minutes). they are part of a series called "Evolving Treatment Landscape in Relapsed/Refractory Follicular Lymphoma."  Three videos, featuring Dr. Krish Patel, Dr. Solly Chedid, and Dr. Madan Arora. Sometimes these are part of a longer series of videos, or previews for longer individual videos, so a few more may get posted soon. But for now, the three that are available are brief but informative.

The videos are short enough that I don't think I need to go through all of them. But the overall message is important.

We're in a time when there are more and more treatments available for us, especially those of us who have relapsed/refractory FL (that is, our last treatment didn't work, or has stopped working after a time). When I was first diagnosed almost 15 years ago, there were very few options available, and the general attitude was something like, "This disease gets more aggressive over time, so we can start with a treatment that will give maximum response time, like R-CHOP. Then we can expect shorter response times with each treatment, with side effects piling up as the treatments get more aggressive as well."

It's amazing what we've learned about FL in 15 years, and how treatments have changed (especially in developing non-chemotherapy treatments that are more targeted at the cancer cells). That means the overall approach has changed, too. Lots of old assumptions are gone, including 1) FL patients will only have an 8-10 year median survival, 2) that the disease will become more aggressive over time, 3) that chemo is the least aggressive approach, and 4) quality of life doesn't matter. The videos in the series make that clear. In theory, FL patients can live long lives (18-20 years is now the consensus for the median survival rate for FL patients), and with decent quality. 

I've said this before, but it's been a while, so worth repeating for those of you who are new to the blog:

A few years ago, someone in a support group said that her oncologist told her, "If we can keep a Follicular Lymphoma patient alive for 5 years, we can keep them alive for 50 years."

That was a long time ago, before CART-T and R-squared and Bi-specifics. It's an important point, and one that I remind myself of a lot: we have more and better treatments now than we ever did, and more options when we need them, especially if our disease is indolent enough to get past those first few years. Obviously, that doesn't apply to every individual patient, but it's enough to give me hope.

Stay well, everyone.