VIDEO: Exploring the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on myeloma care

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

We know that multiple myeloma patients, unfortunately, suffered more during this pandemic, given that they have a cancer that affect their immune system. They received treatments that also lower their immune responses to vaccines. And they're at high risk of getting infections, complications of infections, and unfortunately even die because of COVID-19. So when we started, we didn't know much about COVID-19. We didn't have the vaccine available, and we didn't have, also, those specific treatments that we use nowadays, including the antibody prevention treatments, and also other improvement in supportive care we do now for COVID-19 patients. So all in all, I think we improved our knowledge of COVID-19 in general. We still unfortunately lose patients due to COVID-19 with myeloma, specifically patients who are relapsed, refractory, in advanced stages, who have problems with their immune system. And as you know, one of the studies, for example, in bispecific, teclistamab, was presented in ASCO, and showed that more than 10 patients died out of COVID in this study. So this study enrolled patients into the COVID pandemic, and that signifies the message that patients into clinical trials, in clinical practice, many of them suffered from COVID. And unfortunately we lost many to COVID, but hopefully things are getting better with the treatments. And one big thing in myeloma is that if we control myeloma, we will help patients with COVID, because it's a cancer that affect the immune system. So it's very important to control their cancer and give them all tools to prevent them from having severe COVID infections.