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Furman discusses treatment options for patients with CLL

Friday, January 16, 2015

Richard Furman, M.D., has been a guest in several debates recently regarding the appropriate time to initiate therapy for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). In this video from OncLive, he discusses how the heterogeneity in the clinical course for patients with this disease makes it imperative to consider not only risk factors, laboratory, and genomic findings, but also the individual patient’s symptoms and performance status before initiating therapy. He says he often must talk patients out of therapy, with the caveat that there will be patients with 17p deletions or 11q deletions who may benefit from early treatment.

He also spoke in December at the Lymphoma & Myeloma International Congress on Hematologic Malignancies as part of a debate about the benefits of combination therapy versus obinutuzumab monotherapy. He took the position that chlorambucil may not need to be added to obinutuzumab in the treatment of the “unfit” CLL patient.

Read the full coverage of the event in the Dec. 25 issue of Oncology Times.