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One practice’s experience with obesity treatment
WASHINGTON – “We have heard about a lot of really interesting new things in therapy, but the reality is that they are just not economically viable at present,” said David Feldshon, MD, of Minnesota Gastroenterology (MNGI), speaking about his experience with offering obesity treatment in his practice.
One problem that Dr. Feldshon and MNGI faced was that they could never get enough patients into their weight loss program, a meal-replacement program priced at about $200 a month. Part of this program, Optifast, a commercially available low-calorie diet and behavior modification program, cost about $360 a month. Most patients found the cost to be prohibitive according to Dr. Feldshon. The program that MNGI offered was fairly competitive when compared with a number of other commercial diet programs like Nutrisystem and Medifast, which cost $300 and $329 a month, respectively.
Because of the economic pressure these programs can exert on patients, Dr. Feldshon spoke to the difficulty of recruiting patients with major metabolic and digestive disorders. “I work in the liver clinic, so I see people with NASH, NAFLD, cirrhosis, near-cirrhosis, diabetes. These are people that would really benefit from this type of program, and I could not get a single patient to sign up.”
For Dr. Feldshon’s program, patients were required to come to MNGI once a week, which led to higher dropout rates. This is troubling because it is important that patients meet with doctors and other patients as part of a weight loss program. But the inconvenience for patients and doctors is not just in physically attending meetings, but in the medical billing. The Affordable Care Act and Medicare cover obesity screening and counseling, but this is only for primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, or clinical nurse specialists. These limits may not extend into private insurance, but they remain a barrier for those covered by Medicare, according to Dr. Feldshon.
Another effective but ultimately expensive option is weight loss drugs. The cost of drugs can vary wildly. Even well-established drugs like phentermine can cost anywhere from $5 to $35 out of pocket a month, according to Dr. Feldshon. Some drugs, like Saxenda, can cost as much as $1,414 per month if paid for out of pocket. While Saxenda is effective, there is a catch in the prescribing and billing for this drug: “The moment you go above 2.4 mg per day, the insurance company says, ‘Aha! He’s treating obesity,’ and they stop covering it.” One drug that Dr. Feldshon recommends is topiramate because it is a multiuse drug. “Often, the insurance company can’t figure out why you’re prescribing it, so they’ll okay it,” said Dr. Feldshon.
One of the most effective nonsurgical methods of weight loss is intragastric balloon. From 2016 to 2017, MNGI used gastric balloons in 22 patients, resulting in 11.4% total body weight loss in these patients. Unfortunately, it was a “financial loser,” according to Dr. Feldshon. The global case rate charge for one balloon is $8,200. MNGI then incurred $2,000 per balloon, $3,000 in hospital charges, $750 for the medical weight loss program, $1,350 for office personnel and visits, and a calculated opportunity cost of $3,140 resulting in a net loss of $2,040 per balloon. The most important factor in this calculation is the opportunity cost, which includes travel to and from the hospital and phone encounters with patients, which took away Dr. Feldshon’s ability to conduct colonoscopies and GI consults.
In an attempt to make balloons cost effective, Dr. Feldshon committed to doing these procedures on his day off, which reduced the opportunity cost to $0. This made the balloon procedure profitable, at $1,100 per balloon, but the volume was too low to make it worthwhile.
Despite the challenges his group faced with treating obesity, Dr. Feldshon offered some cost-saving solutions to help keep costs down for both patients and doctors. He suggested avoiding manufacturer weight loss programs. Identify an internal program that is reasonably priced or an external program like Weight Watchers. Physicians can utilize video conferencing for weekly meetings; this helps patients interact with doctors, and products like AdobeConnect cost physicians only about $50 a month. Patients can use free online journaling products like MyFitnessPal to track diet and exercise. Physicians can also recommend using generic and over-the-counter drugs and consider enlisting the help of a life coach or dietitian.
“All obese patients benefit from weight loss but we should be targeting those with metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, hypercholesterolemia, hyperlipidemia, and increased abdominal girth,” said Dr. Feldshon.
Dr. Feldshon has served on advisory committees and review panels and has worked with United Health Group as well as Prime Therapeutics.
AGA Resource
AGA has created an Obesity Practice Guide to provide gastroenterologists with a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary process to guide and personalize innovative obesity care for safe and effective weight management, including a model for how to operationalize business issues.
The increase in the proportion of people who are overweight and obese presents gastroenterologists with new challenges and opportunities. Our internal medicine background, experience in nutrition, and role as endoscopists puts us in a unique position to manage obesity. In addition, many GI conditions are directly affected by obesity, including NASH, GERD, pancreatic diseases, and colon cancer. Good nutrition will always be the cornerstone of healthy weight, but nutritional advice alone results in modest (2%-3%) total weight loss. This can be augmented with medications, meal replacement, endobariatrics, and combinations of these.
Having said this, there are significant challenges to managing obesity as a gastroenterologist, and these stem almost entirely from the fact that there is poor coverage for these therapeutic options, as emphasized by Dr. Feldshon. However, it is still important to bring weight loss interventions into our clinical practice – for many reasons.
First, unlike other obesity management programs, we are typically not managing obesity in isolation. Usually, we are managing obesity in the setting of a disease state such as NASH. When we manage patients with NASH and stage 3 fibrosis, the patients’ decision making on how much to invest to prevent further progression is different; they’re more likely to take on some costs. Second, the degree of coverage for medications is improving. Similarly, although endobariatrics is not currently covered, with time it likely will be under certain criteria.
We need to build the clinical experience necessary to manage obesity and do so now, or other specialties will have become the main providers of weight loss interventions. This will become a lost opportunity for both medical and endobariatric management of these patients by us.
So despite the challenges raised by Dr. Feldshon, I would suggest that a practicing gastroenterologist interested in weight loss management focus on patients with obesity-related diseases first and expand their focus incrementally.
Wahajat Mehal, MD, DPhil, is a hepatologist and director of the Yale Weight Loss Program at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. He is an associate editor for GI & Hepatology News.
The increase in the proportion of people who are overweight and obese presents gastroenterologists with new challenges and opportunities. Our internal medicine background, experience in nutrition, and role as endoscopists puts us in a unique position to manage obesity. In addition, many GI conditions are directly affected by obesity, including NASH, GERD, pancreatic diseases, and colon cancer. Good nutrition will always be the cornerstone of healthy weight, but nutritional advice alone results in modest (2%-3%) total weight loss. This can be augmented with medications, meal replacement, endobariatrics, and combinations of these.
Having said this, there are significant challenges to managing obesity as a gastroenterologist, and these stem almost entirely from the fact that there is poor coverage for these therapeutic options, as emphasized by Dr. Feldshon. However, it is still important to bring weight loss interventions into our clinical practice – for many reasons.
First, unlike other obesity management programs, we are typically not managing obesity in isolation. Usually, we are managing obesity in the setting of a disease state such as NASH. When we manage patients with NASH and stage 3 fibrosis, the patients’ decision making on how much to invest to prevent further progression is different; they’re more likely to take on some costs. Second, the degree of coverage for medications is improving. Similarly, although endobariatrics is not currently covered, with time it likely will be under certain criteria.
We need to build the clinical experience necessary to manage obesity and do so now, or other specialties will have become the main providers of weight loss interventions. This will become a lost opportunity for both medical and endobariatric management of these patients by us.
So despite the challenges raised by Dr. Feldshon, I would suggest that a practicing gastroenterologist interested in weight loss management focus on patients with obesity-related diseases first and expand their focus incrementally.
Wahajat Mehal, MD, DPhil, is a hepatologist and director of the Yale Weight Loss Program at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. He is an associate editor for GI & Hepatology News.
The increase in the proportion of people who are overweight and obese presents gastroenterologists with new challenges and opportunities. Our internal medicine background, experience in nutrition, and role as endoscopists puts us in a unique position to manage obesity. In addition, many GI conditions are directly affected by obesity, including NASH, GERD, pancreatic diseases, and colon cancer. Good nutrition will always be the cornerstone of healthy weight, but nutritional advice alone results in modest (2%-3%) total weight loss. This can be augmented with medications, meal replacement, endobariatrics, and combinations of these.
Having said this, there are significant challenges to managing obesity as a gastroenterologist, and these stem almost entirely from the fact that there is poor coverage for these therapeutic options, as emphasized by Dr. Feldshon. However, it is still important to bring weight loss interventions into our clinical practice – for many reasons.
First, unlike other obesity management programs, we are typically not managing obesity in isolation. Usually, we are managing obesity in the setting of a disease state such as NASH. When we manage patients with NASH and stage 3 fibrosis, the patients’ decision making on how much to invest to prevent further progression is different; they’re more likely to take on some costs. Second, the degree of coverage for medications is improving. Similarly, although endobariatrics is not currently covered, with time it likely will be under certain criteria.
We need to build the clinical experience necessary to manage obesity and do so now, or other specialties will have become the main providers of weight loss interventions. This will become a lost opportunity for both medical and endobariatric management of these patients by us.
So despite the challenges raised by Dr. Feldshon, I would suggest that a practicing gastroenterologist interested in weight loss management focus on patients with obesity-related diseases first and expand their focus incrementally.
Wahajat Mehal, MD, DPhil, is a hepatologist and director of the Yale Weight Loss Program at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. He is an associate editor for GI & Hepatology News.
WASHINGTON – “We have heard about a lot of really interesting new things in therapy, but the reality is that they are just not economically viable at present,” said David Feldshon, MD, of Minnesota Gastroenterology (MNGI), speaking about his experience with offering obesity treatment in his practice.
One problem that Dr. Feldshon and MNGI faced was that they could never get enough patients into their weight loss program, a meal-replacement program priced at about $200 a month. Part of this program, Optifast, a commercially available low-calorie diet and behavior modification program, cost about $360 a month. Most patients found the cost to be prohibitive according to Dr. Feldshon. The program that MNGI offered was fairly competitive when compared with a number of other commercial diet programs like Nutrisystem and Medifast, which cost $300 and $329 a month, respectively.
Because of the economic pressure these programs can exert on patients, Dr. Feldshon spoke to the difficulty of recruiting patients with major metabolic and digestive disorders. “I work in the liver clinic, so I see people with NASH, NAFLD, cirrhosis, near-cirrhosis, diabetes. These are people that would really benefit from this type of program, and I could not get a single patient to sign up.”
For Dr. Feldshon’s program, patients were required to come to MNGI once a week, which led to higher dropout rates. This is troubling because it is important that patients meet with doctors and other patients as part of a weight loss program. But the inconvenience for patients and doctors is not just in physically attending meetings, but in the medical billing. The Affordable Care Act and Medicare cover obesity screening and counseling, but this is only for primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, or clinical nurse specialists. These limits may not extend into private insurance, but they remain a barrier for those covered by Medicare, according to Dr. Feldshon.
Another effective but ultimately expensive option is weight loss drugs. The cost of drugs can vary wildly. Even well-established drugs like phentermine can cost anywhere from $5 to $35 out of pocket a month, according to Dr. Feldshon. Some drugs, like Saxenda, can cost as much as $1,414 per month if paid for out of pocket. While Saxenda is effective, there is a catch in the prescribing and billing for this drug: “The moment you go above 2.4 mg per day, the insurance company says, ‘Aha! He’s treating obesity,’ and they stop covering it.” One drug that Dr. Feldshon recommends is topiramate because it is a multiuse drug. “Often, the insurance company can’t figure out why you’re prescribing it, so they’ll okay it,” said Dr. Feldshon.
One of the most effective nonsurgical methods of weight loss is intragastric balloon. From 2016 to 2017, MNGI used gastric balloons in 22 patients, resulting in 11.4% total body weight loss in these patients. Unfortunately, it was a “financial loser,” according to Dr. Feldshon. The global case rate charge for one balloon is $8,200. MNGI then incurred $2,000 per balloon, $3,000 in hospital charges, $750 for the medical weight loss program, $1,350 for office personnel and visits, and a calculated opportunity cost of $3,140 resulting in a net loss of $2,040 per balloon. The most important factor in this calculation is the opportunity cost, which includes travel to and from the hospital and phone encounters with patients, which took away Dr. Feldshon’s ability to conduct colonoscopies and GI consults.
In an attempt to make balloons cost effective, Dr. Feldshon committed to doing these procedures on his day off, which reduced the opportunity cost to $0. This made the balloon procedure profitable, at $1,100 per balloon, but the volume was too low to make it worthwhile.
Despite the challenges his group faced with treating obesity, Dr. Feldshon offered some cost-saving solutions to help keep costs down for both patients and doctors. He suggested avoiding manufacturer weight loss programs. Identify an internal program that is reasonably priced or an external program like Weight Watchers. Physicians can utilize video conferencing for weekly meetings; this helps patients interact with doctors, and products like AdobeConnect cost physicians only about $50 a month. Patients can use free online journaling products like MyFitnessPal to track diet and exercise. Physicians can also recommend using generic and over-the-counter drugs and consider enlisting the help of a life coach or dietitian.
“All obese patients benefit from weight loss but we should be targeting those with metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, hypercholesterolemia, hyperlipidemia, and increased abdominal girth,” said Dr. Feldshon.
Dr. Feldshon has served on advisory committees and review panels and has worked with United Health Group as well as Prime Therapeutics.
AGA Resource
AGA has created an Obesity Practice Guide to provide gastroenterologists with a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary process to guide and personalize innovative obesity care for safe and effective weight management, including a model for how to operationalize business issues.
WASHINGTON – “We have heard about a lot of really interesting new things in therapy, but the reality is that they are just not economically viable at present,” said David Feldshon, MD, of Minnesota Gastroenterology (MNGI), speaking about his experience with offering obesity treatment in his practice.
One problem that Dr. Feldshon and MNGI faced was that they could never get enough patients into their weight loss program, a meal-replacement program priced at about $200 a month. Part of this program, Optifast, a commercially available low-calorie diet and behavior modification program, cost about $360 a month. Most patients found the cost to be prohibitive according to Dr. Feldshon. The program that MNGI offered was fairly competitive when compared with a number of other commercial diet programs like Nutrisystem and Medifast, which cost $300 and $329 a month, respectively.
Because of the economic pressure these programs can exert on patients, Dr. Feldshon spoke to the difficulty of recruiting patients with major metabolic and digestive disorders. “I work in the liver clinic, so I see people with NASH, NAFLD, cirrhosis, near-cirrhosis, diabetes. These are people that would really benefit from this type of program, and I could not get a single patient to sign up.”
For Dr. Feldshon’s program, patients were required to come to MNGI once a week, which led to higher dropout rates. This is troubling because it is important that patients meet with doctors and other patients as part of a weight loss program. But the inconvenience for patients and doctors is not just in physically attending meetings, but in the medical billing. The Affordable Care Act and Medicare cover obesity screening and counseling, but this is only for primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, or clinical nurse specialists. These limits may not extend into private insurance, but they remain a barrier for those covered by Medicare, according to Dr. Feldshon.
Another effective but ultimately expensive option is weight loss drugs. The cost of drugs can vary wildly. Even well-established drugs like phentermine can cost anywhere from $5 to $35 out of pocket a month, according to Dr. Feldshon. Some drugs, like Saxenda, can cost as much as $1,414 per month if paid for out of pocket. While Saxenda is effective, there is a catch in the prescribing and billing for this drug: “The moment you go above 2.4 mg per day, the insurance company says, ‘Aha! He’s treating obesity,’ and they stop covering it.” One drug that Dr. Feldshon recommends is topiramate because it is a multiuse drug. “Often, the insurance company can’t figure out why you’re prescribing it, so they’ll okay it,” said Dr. Feldshon.
One of the most effective nonsurgical methods of weight loss is intragastric balloon. From 2016 to 2017, MNGI used gastric balloons in 22 patients, resulting in 11.4% total body weight loss in these patients. Unfortunately, it was a “financial loser,” according to Dr. Feldshon. The global case rate charge for one balloon is $8,200. MNGI then incurred $2,000 per balloon, $3,000 in hospital charges, $750 for the medical weight loss program, $1,350 for office personnel and visits, and a calculated opportunity cost of $3,140 resulting in a net loss of $2,040 per balloon. The most important factor in this calculation is the opportunity cost, which includes travel to and from the hospital and phone encounters with patients, which took away Dr. Feldshon’s ability to conduct colonoscopies and GI consults.
In an attempt to make balloons cost effective, Dr. Feldshon committed to doing these procedures on his day off, which reduced the opportunity cost to $0. This made the balloon procedure profitable, at $1,100 per balloon, but the volume was too low to make it worthwhile.
Despite the challenges his group faced with treating obesity, Dr. Feldshon offered some cost-saving solutions to help keep costs down for both patients and doctors. He suggested avoiding manufacturer weight loss programs. Identify an internal program that is reasonably priced or an external program like Weight Watchers. Physicians can utilize video conferencing for weekly meetings; this helps patients interact with doctors, and products like AdobeConnect cost physicians only about $50 a month. Patients can use free online journaling products like MyFitnessPal to track diet and exercise. Physicians can also recommend using generic and over-the-counter drugs and consider enlisting the help of a life coach or dietitian.
“All obese patients benefit from weight loss but we should be targeting those with metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, hypercholesterolemia, hyperlipidemia, and increased abdominal girth,” said Dr. Feldshon.
Dr. Feldshon has served on advisory committees and review panels and has worked with United Health Group as well as Prime Therapeutics.
AGA Resource
AGA has created an Obesity Practice Guide to provide gastroenterologists with a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary process to guide and personalize innovative obesity care for safe and effective weight management, including a model for how to operationalize business issues.
EXPERT ANALYSIS FROM DDW 2018
Bivalent HPV vaccine brings no significant increase in 38 potential adverse outcomes
MALMO, SWEDEN – in a nationwide, retrospective cohort study.
“Anxiety and fear regarding adverse events are still very much alive and are associated with lack of acceptance of HPV vaccination,” Jozica Skufca, DVM, MIPH, observed while presenting the study findings at the annual meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.
“These results contribute valid evidence to combat public skepticism, anxiety, fears of adverse events, and possible opposition to HPV vaccination and consequently can contribute to increase HPV vaccination coverage in Finland as well as elsewhere,” added Dr. Skufca, who conducted this research while at the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare but is now an epidemiologist at P95, a privately held epidemiology and pharmacovigilance consulting firm in Heverlee, Belgium.
Finland introduced the bivalent HPV vaccine known as Cervarix, which is directed against HPV types 16 and 18, into the nation’s vaccination program in November 2013. The target population were girls aged 11-13 years, with catch-up vaccination at ages 14-15 years until 2015.
Dr. Skufca utilized Finland’s comprehensive system of national health care registries to conduct a study of all 240,605 Finnish girls aged 11-15 years who were eligible for the bivalent HPV vaccine from November 2013 to December 2016. Only 56% of the target population, or 134,615 girls, were actually vaccinated. All were subsequently followed for more than a year.
The investigators compared vaccinated and unvaccinated groups in terms of the subsequent rates of 38 selected outcomes of national and international interest. These included celiac disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, type 1 diabetes, Guillain-Barré syndrome, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, ulcerative colitis, venous thromboembolism, psoriasis, vitiligo, scleroderma, autism, poyarteritis nodosa, asthma, Raynaud’s disease, systemic lupus erythematosus, Bell’s palsy, polycystic ovaries, juvenile arthritis, Hashimoto’s disease, and many others.
HPV vaccination rates varied considerably between hospital districts, so the results were adjusted for that potential confounder. Risks also were adjusted for the number of hospital visits 1-2 years prior to vaccination, because healthier girls – those with fewer hospital visits – turned out to be more likely to get vaccinated.
The study’s main result was that HPV vaccination wasn’t associated with a significantly higher risk of any of the 38 adverse outcomes. To the contrary, vaccination was associated with significantly reduced risk of several of them: The risk of chronic fatigue syndrome was reduced by 25%, epilepsy and recurrent seizures were reduced by 28%, the risk of Henoch-Schönlein purpura was an adjusted 52% lower in children vaccinated against HPV, and the risk of malaise and fatigue was reduced by 24%.
Dr. Skufca drew particular attention to the 400% increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome in vaccinated children. While this may look impressive, it wasn’t a statistically significant difference. Guillain-Barré was a rare event, with only six cases occurring during 186,934 person-years of follow-up of vaccinated individuals and a single case in unvaccinated girls. Two cases occurred within 180 days after vaccination, for an adjusted 200% increase in risk, which was nonsignificant.
Another two cases occurred more than 365 days postvaccination, for a whopping 3100% increased risk, compared with unvaccinated children; however, this too was a nonstatistically significant finding, with extraordinarily broad confidence intervals of 1.59-652.4. And there is no plausible mechanism to account for a true association between HPV vaccination and a complication, such as this, occurring more than 1 year later. It appeared to be a matter of chance, she added.
However, session cochair Ron Dagan, MD, commented that vaccine skeptics won’t find the Guillain-Barré findings reassuring.
“With HPV vaccination, there are a lot of issues related to mass perception. You say it’s not statistically significant, but some people will say, ‘Forget about the statistics – look at the confidence intervals, the risk could be more than 600 times increased.’ How do you answer this? It’s not easy, especially when we’re talking about a vaccine which has a strong adjuvant,” said Dr. Dagan, director of the pediatric infectious disease unit at Soroka University Medical Center and professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, both in Beer-Sheva, Israel.
“I completely agree, how to communicate results to the public is one of the most challenging things. They don’t understand about statistics,” Dr. Skufca replied.
The ball is now in the court of the Finnish health ministry, she added. These study results are brand new. Ministry officials are now going over the details and developing a strategy to communicate the results to the media, the public, and affected families.
The study was funded by the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare. Dr. Skufca reported receiving research grants from GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer.
MALMO, SWEDEN – in a nationwide, retrospective cohort study.
“Anxiety and fear regarding adverse events are still very much alive and are associated with lack of acceptance of HPV vaccination,” Jozica Skufca, DVM, MIPH, observed while presenting the study findings at the annual meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.
“These results contribute valid evidence to combat public skepticism, anxiety, fears of adverse events, and possible opposition to HPV vaccination and consequently can contribute to increase HPV vaccination coverage in Finland as well as elsewhere,” added Dr. Skufca, who conducted this research while at the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare but is now an epidemiologist at P95, a privately held epidemiology and pharmacovigilance consulting firm in Heverlee, Belgium.
Finland introduced the bivalent HPV vaccine known as Cervarix, which is directed against HPV types 16 and 18, into the nation’s vaccination program in November 2013. The target population were girls aged 11-13 years, with catch-up vaccination at ages 14-15 years until 2015.
Dr. Skufca utilized Finland’s comprehensive system of national health care registries to conduct a study of all 240,605 Finnish girls aged 11-15 years who were eligible for the bivalent HPV vaccine from November 2013 to December 2016. Only 56% of the target population, or 134,615 girls, were actually vaccinated. All were subsequently followed for more than a year.
The investigators compared vaccinated and unvaccinated groups in terms of the subsequent rates of 38 selected outcomes of national and international interest. These included celiac disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, type 1 diabetes, Guillain-Barré syndrome, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, ulcerative colitis, venous thromboembolism, psoriasis, vitiligo, scleroderma, autism, poyarteritis nodosa, asthma, Raynaud’s disease, systemic lupus erythematosus, Bell’s palsy, polycystic ovaries, juvenile arthritis, Hashimoto’s disease, and many others.
HPV vaccination rates varied considerably between hospital districts, so the results were adjusted for that potential confounder. Risks also were adjusted for the number of hospital visits 1-2 years prior to vaccination, because healthier girls – those with fewer hospital visits – turned out to be more likely to get vaccinated.
The study’s main result was that HPV vaccination wasn’t associated with a significantly higher risk of any of the 38 adverse outcomes. To the contrary, vaccination was associated with significantly reduced risk of several of them: The risk of chronic fatigue syndrome was reduced by 25%, epilepsy and recurrent seizures were reduced by 28%, the risk of Henoch-Schönlein purpura was an adjusted 52% lower in children vaccinated against HPV, and the risk of malaise and fatigue was reduced by 24%.
Dr. Skufca drew particular attention to the 400% increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome in vaccinated children. While this may look impressive, it wasn’t a statistically significant difference. Guillain-Barré was a rare event, with only six cases occurring during 186,934 person-years of follow-up of vaccinated individuals and a single case in unvaccinated girls. Two cases occurred within 180 days after vaccination, for an adjusted 200% increase in risk, which was nonsignificant.
Another two cases occurred more than 365 days postvaccination, for a whopping 3100% increased risk, compared with unvaccinated children; however, this too was a nonstatistically significant finding, with extraordinarily broad confidence intervals of 1.59-652.4. And there is no plausible mechanism to account for a true association between HPV vaccination and a complication, such as this, occurring more than 1 year later. It appeared to be a matter of chance, she added.
However, session cochair Ron Dagan, MD, commented that vaccine skeptics won’t find the Guillain-Barré findings reassuring.
“With HPV vaccination, there are a lot of issues related to mass perception. You say it’s not statistically significant, but some people will say, ‘Forget about the statistics – look at the confidence intervals, the risk could be more than 600 times increased.’ How do you answer this? It’s not easy, especially when we’re talking about a vaccine which has a strong adjuvant,” said Dr. Dagan, director of the pediatric infectious disease unit at Soroka University Medical Center and professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, both in Beer-Sheva, Israel.
“I completely agree, how to communicate results to the public is one of the most challenging things. They don’t understand about statistics,” Dr. Skufca replied.
The ball is now in the court of the Finnish health ministry, she added. These study results are brand new. Ministry officials are now going over the details and developing a strategy to communicate the results to the media, the public, and affected families.
The study was funded by the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare. Dr. Skufca reported receiving research grants from GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer.
MALMO, SWEDEN – in a nationwide, retrospective cohort study.
“Anxiety and fear regarding adverse events are still very much alive and are associated with lack of acceptance of HPV vaccination,” Jozica Skufca, DVM, MIPH, observed while presenting the study findings at the annual meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.
“These results contribute valid evidence to combat public skepticism, anxiety, fears of adverse events, and possible opposition to HPV vaccination and consequently can contribute to increase HPV vaccination coverage in Finland as well as elsewhere,” added Dr. Skufca, who conducted this research while at the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare but is now an epidemiologist at P95, a privately held epidemiology and pharmacovigilance consulting firm in Heverlee, Belgium.
Finland introduced the bivalent HPV vaccine known as Cervarix, which is directed against HPV types 16 and 18, into the nation’s vaccination program in November 2013. The target population were girls aged 11-13 years, with catch-up vaccination at ages 14-15 years until 2015.
Dr. Skufca utilized Finland’s comprehensive system of national health care registries to conduct a study of all 240,605 Finnish girls aged 11-15 years who were eligible for the bivalent HPV vaccine from November 2013 to December 2016. Only 56% of the target population, or 134,615 girls, were actually vaccinated. All were subsequently followed for more than a year.
The investigators compared vaccinated and unvaccinated groups in terms of the subsequent rates of 38 selected outcomes of national and international interest. These included celiac disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, type 1 diabetes, Guillain-Barré syndrome, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, ulcerative colitis, venous thromboembolism, psoriasis, vitiligo, scleroderma, autism, poyarteritis nodosa, asthma, Raynaud’s disease, systemic lupus erythematosus, Bell’s palsy, polycystic ovaries, juvenile arthritis, Hashimoto’s disease, and many others.
HPV vaccination rates varied considerably between hospital districts, so the results were adjusted for that potential confounder. Risks also were adjusted for the number of hospital visits 1-2 years prior to vaccination, because healthier girls – those with fewer hospital visits – turned out to be more likely to get vaccinated.
The study’s main result was that HPV vaccination wasn’t associated with a significantly higher risk of any of the 38 adverse outcomes. To the contrary, vaccination was associated with significantly reduced risk of several of them: The risk of chronic fatigue syndrome was reduced by 25%, epilepsy and recurrent seizures were reduced by 28%, the risk of Henoch-Schönlein purpura was an adjusted 52% lower in children vaccinated against HPV, and the risk of malaise and fatigue was reduced by 24%.
Dr. Skufca drew particular attention to the 400% increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome in vaccinated children. While this may look impressive, it wasn’t a statistically significant difference. Guillain-Barré was a rare event, with only six cases occurring during 186,934 person-years of follow-up of vaccinated individuals and a single case in unvaccinated girls. Two cases occurred within 180 days after vaccination, for an adjusted 200% increase in risk, which was nonsignificant.
Another two cases occurred more than 365 days postvaccination, for a whopping 3100% increased risk, compared with unvaccinated children; however, this too was a nonstatistically significant finding, with extraordinarily broad confidence intervals of 1.59-652.4. And there is no plausible mechanism to account for a true association between HPV vaccination and a complication, such as this, occurring more than 1 year later. It appeared to be a matter of chance, she added.
However, session cochair Ron Dagan, MD, commented that vaccine skeptics won’t find the Guillain-Barré findings reassuring.
“With HPV vaccination, there are a lot of issues related to mass perception. You say it’s not statistically significant, but some people will say, ‘Forget about the statistics – look at the confidence intervals, the risk could be more than 600 times increased.’ How do you answer this? It’s not easy, especially when we’re talking about a vaccine which has a strong adjuvant,” said Dr. Dagan, director of the pediatric infectious disease unit at Soroka University Medical Center and professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, both in Beer-Sheva, Israel.
“I completely agree, how to communicate results to the public is one of the most challenging things. They don’t understand about statistics,” Dr. Skufca replied.
The ball is now in the court of the Finnish health ministry, she added. These study results are brand new. Ministry officials are now going over the details and developing a strategy to communicate the results to the media, the public, and affected families.
The study was funded by the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare. Dr. Skufca reported receiving research grants from GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer.
REPORTING FROM ESPID 2018
Key clinical point: Human papillomavirus vaccination poses no significant increased risk of numerous potential adverse outcomes.
Major finding: There was no significantly increased risk of any of 38 potential adverse outcomes in girls aged 11-15 years following administration of a bivalent HPV vaccine.
Study details: This was a retrospective cohort study including more than 240,000 Finnish girls eligible for HPV vaccination following its introduction into the national immunization program.
Disclosures: The study was sponsored by the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare. The presenter reported receiving research grants from GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer.
Hospitalist movers and shakers – July 2018
Steven Pantilat, MD, MHM, has been named the first chief of the newly established division of palliative medicine at University of California, San Francisco Health. Dr. Pantilat’s new role commenced on May 1st, with the division launch anticipated for July 1st.
Dr. Pantilat is a Master of the Society of Hospital Medicine and a former president of the society (2005-2006).
Gary J. Carver, MD, recently was named the chief medical officer at Coshocton (Ohio) Regional Medical Center. Dr. Carver has been the hospital’s director of hospital medicine since 2013 and will continue in that role in addition to his duties as CMO.
In his new position, Dr. Carver joins Coshocton Medical Center’s senior leadership team, providing medical oversight, as well as clinical direction and leadership as the facility seeks accreditation, quality improvement, and service line development.
Lisa Shah, MD, has been hired by Sound Physicians as the group’s chief innovation officer. Dr. Shah had been working as senior vice president of Evolent Health’s clinical operations and network. With Sound Physicians, Dr. Shah will lead clinical innovation and transformation for the nationwide organization of physicians providing emergency medical, critical care, and hospital medicine services at more than 180 hospitals.
Dr. Shah will be tasked with developing innovative care models, tech-centered clinical workflows, and telemedicine strategies. She brings a robust hospital medicine background, having served in a 2-year Hospitalist Scholars Fellowship at the University of Chicago, while simultaneously earning a master’s degree in public health.
BUSINESS MOVES
The University of Mississippi Medical Center Children’s of Mississippi, Hattiesburg, branch is joining forces with Memorial Hospital at Gulfport (Miss.) to provide care throughout southern Mississippi.
The highlight of the merger is the acquisition of six pediatric clinics into the UMMC family, with UMMC assuming control of the pediatric hospitalist program at each of the locations. The acquired clinics all have been branded as Children’s of Mississippi as of March 26th.
Sound Physicians’ parent company Fresenius Medical Care, which has held a controlling interest in Sound since 2014, has sold that interest to Germany-based Summit Partners for a reported $2.15 billion. The acquisition is expected to be finalized later this calendar year.
Sound, which reported revenues of approximately $1.5 billion in 2017, is optimistic that it can tap into new markets while under the Summit umbrella.
The Ob Hospitalist Group, Greenville, S.C., the nation’s largest Ob/Gyn hospitalist organization, recently announced the rollout of its CARE (Clinician Assistance, Recovery, and Encourage) program. CARE uses peer support to assist clinicians facing psychological and emotional impacts from adverse Ob events.
CARE peer counseling focuses on confidentiality, empathy, trust, and respect for colleagues suffering from a negative patient-care event. The program is available to more than 600 Ob hospitalist clinicians at more than 120 hospitals nationwide.
Steven Pantilat, MD, MHM, has been named the first chief of the newly established division of palliative medicine at University of California, San Francisco Health. Dr. Pantilat’s new role commenced on May 1st, with the division launch anticipated for July 1st.
Dr. Pantilat is a Master of the Society of Hospital Medicine and a former president of the society (2005-2006).
Gary J. Carver, MD, recently was named the chief medical officer at Coshocton (Ohio) Regional Medical Center. Dr. Carver has been the hospital’s director of hospital medicine since 2013 and will continue in that role in addition to his duties as CMO.
In his new position, Dr. Carver joins Coshocton Medical Center’s senior leadership team, providing medical oversight, as well as clinical direction and leadership as the facility seeks accreditation, quality improvement, and service line development.
Lisa Shah, MD, has been hired by Sound Physicians as the group’s chief innovation officer. Dr. Shah had been working as senior vice president of Evolent Health’s clinical operations and network. With Sound Physicians, Dr. Shah will lead clinical innovation and transformation for the nationwide organization of physicians providing emergency medical, critical care, and hospital medicine services at more than 180 hospitals.
Dr. Shah will be tasked with developing innovative care models, tech-centered clinical workflows, and telemedicine strategies. She brings a robust hospital medicine background, having served in a 2-year Hospitalist Scholars Fellowship at the University of Chicago, while simultaneously earning a master’s degree in public health.
BUSINESS MOVES
The University of Mississippi Medical Center Children’s of Mississippi, Hattiesburg, branch is joining forces with Memorial Hospital at Gulfport (Miss.) to provide care throughout southern Mississippi.
The highlight of the merger is the acquisition of six pediatric clinics into the UMMC family, with UMMC assuming control of the pediatric hospitalist program at each of the locations. The acquired clinics all have been branded as Children’s of Mississippi as of March 26th.
Sound Physicians’ parent company Fresenius Medical Care, which has held a controlling interest in Sound since 2014, has sold that interest to Germany-based Summit Partners for a reported $2.15 billion. The acquisition is expected to be finalized later this calendar year.
Sound, which reported revenues of approximately $1.5 billion in 2017, is optimistic that it can tap into new markets while under the Summit umbrella.
The Ob Hospitalist Group, Greenville, S.C., the nation’s largest Ob/Gyn hospitalist organization, recently announced the rollout of its CARE (Clinician Assistance, Recovery, and Encourage) program. CARE uses peer support to assist clinicians facing psychological and emotional impacts from adverse Ob events.
CARE peer counseling focuses on confidentiality, empathy, trust, and respect for colleagues suffering from a negative patient-care event. The program is available to more than 600 Ob hospitalist clinicians at more than 120 hospitals nationwide.
Steven Pantilat, MD, MHM, has been named the first chief of the newly established division of palliative medicine at University of California, San Francisco Health. Dr. Pantilat’s new role commenced on May 1st, with the division launch anticipated for July 1st.
Dr. Pantilat is a Master of the Society of Hospital Medicine and a former president of the society (2005-2006).
Gary J. Carver, MD, recently was named the chief medical officer at Coshocton (Ohio) Regional Medical Center. Dr. Carver has been the hospital’s director of hospital medicine since 2013 and will continue in that role in addition to his duties as CMO.
In his new position, Dr. Carver joins Coshocton Medical Center’s senior leadership team, providing medical oversight, as well as clinical direction and leadership as the facility seeks accreditation, quality improvement, and service line development.
Lisa Shah, MD, has been hired by Sound Physicians as the group’s chief innovation officer. Dr. Shah had been working as senior vice president of Evolent Health’s clinical operations and network. With Sound Physicians, Dr. Shah will lead clinical innovation and transformation for the nationwide organization of physicians providing emergency medical, critical care, and hospital medicine services at more than 180 hospitals.
Dr. Shah will be tasked with developing innovative care models, tech-centered clinical workflows, and telemedicine strategies. She brings a robust hospital medicine background, having served in a 2-year Hospitalist Scholars Fellowship at the University of Chicago, while simultaneously earning a master’s degree in public health.
BUSINESS MOVES
The University of Mississippi Medical Center Children’s of Mississippi, Hattiesburg, branch is joining forces with Memorial Hospital at Gulfport (Miss.) to provide care throughout southern Mississippi.
The highlight of the merger is the acquisition of six pediatric clinics into the UMMC family, with UMMC assuming control of the pediatric hospitalist program at each of the locations. The acquired clinics all have been branded as Children’s of Mississippi as of March 26th.
Sound Physicians’ parent company Fresenius Medical Care, which has held a controlling interest in Sound since 2014, has sold that interest to Germany-based Summit Partners for a reported $2.15 billion. The acquisition is expected to be finalized later this calendar year.
Sound, which reported revenues of approximately $1.5 billion in 2017, is optimistic that it can tap into new markets while under the Summit umbrella.
The Ob Hospitalist Group, Greenville, S.C., the nation’s largest Ob/Gyn hospitalist organization, recently announced the rollout of its CARE (Clinician Assistance, Recovery, and Encourage) program. CARE uses peer support to assist clinicians facing psychological and emotional impacts from adverse Ob events.
CARE peer counseling focuses on confidentiality, empathy, trust, and respect for colleagues suffering from a negative patient-care event. The program is available to more than 600 Ob hospitalist clinicians at more than 120 hospitals nationwide.
Nearly one-quarter of presurgery patients already using opioids
at a large academic medical center, a cross-sectional observational study has determined.
Prescription or illegal opioid use can have profound implications for surgical outcomes and continued postoperative medication abuse. “Preoperative opioid use was associated with a greater burden of comorbid disease and multiple risk factors for poor recovery. ... Opioid-tolerant patients are at risk for opioid-associated adverse events and are less likely to discontinue opioid-based therapy after their surgery,” wrote Paul E. Hilliard, MD, and a team of researchers at the University of Michigan Health System. Although the question of preoperative opioid use has been examined and the Michigan findings are consistent with earlier estimates of prevalence (Ann Surg. 2017;265[4]:695-701), this study sought a more detailed profile of both the characteristics of these patients and the types of procedures correlated with opioid use.
Patient data were derived primarily from two ongoing institutional registries, the Michigan Genomics Initiative and the Analgesic Outcomes Study. Each of these projects involved recruiting nonemergency surgery patients to participate and self-report on pain and affect issues. Opioid use data were extracted from the preop anesthesia history and from physical examination. A total of 34,186 patients were recruited for this study; 54.2% were women, 89.1% were white, and the mean age was 53.1 years. Overall, 23.1% of these patients were taking opioids of various kinds, mostly by prescription along with nonprescription opioids and illegal drugs of other kinds.
The most common opioids found in this patient sample were hydrocodone bitartrate (59.4%), tramadol hydrochloride (21.2%) and oxycodone hydrochloride (18.5%), although the duration or frequency of use was not determined.
“In our experience, in surveys like this patients are pretty honest. [The data do not] track to their medical record, but was done privately for research. That having been said, I am sure there is significant underreporting,” study coauthor Michael J. Englesbe, MD, FACS, said in an interview. In addition to some nondisclosure by study participants, the exclusion of patients admitted to surgery from the ED could mean that 23.1% is a conservative estimate, he noted.
Patient characteristics included in the study (tobacco use, alcohol use, sleep apnea, pain, life satisfaction, depression, anxiety) were self-reported and validated using tools such as the Brief Pain Inventory, the Fibromyalgia Survey, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Procedural data were derived from patient records and ICD-10 data and rated via the ASA score and Charlson Comorbidity Index.
A multivariate analysis of patient characteristics found that age between 31 and 40, tobacco use, heavy alcohol use, pain score, depression, comorbidities reflected in a higher ASA score, and Charlson Comorbidity Score were all significant risk factors for presurgical opiate use.
Patients who were scheduled for surgical procedures involving lower extremities (adjusted odds ratio 3.61, 95% confidence interval, 2.81-4.64) were at the highest risk for opioid use, followed by pelvis surgery, excluding hip (aOR, 3.09, 95% CI, 1.88-5.08), upper arm or elbow (aOR, 3.07, 95% CI, 2.12-4.45), and spine surgery (aOR, 2.68, 95% CI, 2.15-3.32).
The study also broke out the data by presurgery opioid usage and surgery service. Of patients having spine neurosurgery, 55.1% were already taking opioids, and among those having orthopedic spine surgery, 65.1% were taking opioids. General surgery patients were not among those mostly likely to be using opioids (gastrointestinal surgery, 19.3% and endocrine surgery 14.3%). “Certain surgical services may be more likely to encounter patients with high comorbidities for opioid use, and more targeted opioid education strategies aimed at those services may help to mitigate risk in the postoperative period,” the authors wrote.
“All surgeons should take a preop pain history. They should ask about current pain and previous pain experiences. They should also ask about a history of substance use disorder. This should lead into a discussion of the pain expectations from the procedure. Patients should expect to be in pain, that is normal. Pain-free surgery is rare. If a patient has a complex pain history or takes chronic opioids, the surgeon should consider referring them to anesthesia for formal preop pain management planning and potentially weaning of opioid dose prior to elective surgery,” noted Dr. Englesbe, the Cyrenus G. Darling Sr., MD and Cyrenus G Darling Jr., MD Professor of Surgery, and faculty at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Surgeons are likely to see patients with a past history of opioid dependence or who are recovering from substance abuse. “Every effort should be made to avoid opioids in these patients. We have developed a Pain Optimization Pathway which facilitates no postoperative opioids for these and other patients. These patients are at high risk to relapse and surgeons must know who these patients are so they can provide optimal care,” Dr. Englesbe added.The limitations of this study as reported by the authors include the single-center design, the nondiverse racial makeup of the sample, and the difficulty of ascertaining the dosing and duration of opioid use, both prescription and illegal.
The investigators reported no disclosures relevant to this study. This study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, the American College of Surgeons, and other noncommercial sources.
SOURCE: Hilliard PE et al. JAMA Surg. 2018 Jul 11. doi: 10.1001/jamasurg.2018.2102.
at a large academic medical center, a cross-sectional observational study has determined.
Prescription or illegal opioid use can have profound implications for surgical outcomes and continued postoperative medication abuse. “Preoperative opioid use was associated with a greater burden of comorbid disease and multiple risk factors for poor recovery. ... Opioid-tolerant patients are at risk for opioid-associated adverse events and are less likely to discontinue opioid-based therapy after their surgery,” wrote Paul E. Hilliard, MD, and a team of researchers at the University of Michigan Health System. Although the question of preoperative opioid use has been examined and the Michigan findings are consistent with earlier estimates of prevalence (Ann Surg. 2017;265[4]:695-701), this study sought a more detailed profile of both the characteristics of these patients and the types of procedures correlated with opioid use.
Patient data were derived primarily from two ongoing institutional registries, the Michigan Genomics Initiative and the Analgesic Outcomes Study. Each of these projects involved recruiting nonemergency surgery patients to participate and self-report on pain and affect issues. Opioid use data were extracted from the preop anesthesia history and from physical examination. A total of 34,186 patients were recruited for this study; 54.2% were women, 89.1% were white, and the mean age was 53.1 years. Overall, 23.1% of these patients were taking opioids of various kinds, mostly by prescription along with nonprescription opioids and illegal drugs of other kinds.
The most common opioids found in this patient sample were hydrocodone bitartrate (59.4%), tramadol hydrochloride (21.2%) and oxycodone hydrochloride (18.5%), although the duration or frequency of use was not determined.
“In our experience, in surveys like this patients are pretty honest. [The data do not] track to their medical record, but was done privately for research. That having been said, I am sure there is significant underreporting,” study coauthor Michael J. Englesbe, MD, FACS, said in an interview. In addition to some nondisclosure by study participants, the exclusion of patients admitted to surgery from the ED could mean that 23.1% is a conservative estimate, he noted.
Patient characteristics included in the study (tobacco use, alcohol use, sleep apnea, pain, life satisfaction, depression, anxiety) were self-reported and validated using tools such as the Brief Pain Inventory, the Fibromyalgia Survey, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Procedural data were derived from patient records and ICD-10 data and rated via the ASA score and Charlson Comorbidity Index.
A multivariate analysis of patient characteristics found that age between 31 and 40, tobacco use, heavy alcohol use, pain score, depression, comorbidities reflected in a higher ASA score, and Charlson Comorbidity Score were all significant risk factors for presurgical opiate use.
Patients who were scheduled for surgical procedures involving lower extremities (adjusted odds ratio 3.61, 95% confidence interval, 2.81-4.64) were at the highest risk for opioid use, followed by pelvis surgery, excluding hip (aOR, 3.09, 95% CI, 1.88-5.08), upper arm or elbow (aOR, 3.07, 95% CI, 2.12-4.45), and spine surgery (aOR, 2.68, 95% CI, 2.15-3.32).
The study also broke out the data by presurgery opioid usage and surgery service. Of patients having spine neurosurgery, 55.1% were already taking opioids, and among those having orthopedic spine surgery, 65.1% were taking opioids. General surgery patients were not among those mostly likely to be using opioids (gastrointestinal surgery, 19.3% and endocrine surgery 14.3%). “Certain surgical services may be more likely to encounter patients with high comorbidities for opioid use, and more targeted opioid education strategies aimed at those services may help to mitigate risk in the postoperative period,” the authors wrote.
“All surgeons should take a preop pain history. They should ask about current pain and previous pain experiences. They should also ask about a history of substance use disorder. This should lead into a discussion of the pain expectations from the procedure. Patients should expect to be in pain, that is normal. Pain-free surgery is rare. If a patient has a complex pain history or takes chronic opioids, the surgeon should consider referring them to anesthesia for formal preop pain management planning and potentially weaning of opioid dose prior to elective surgery,” noted Dr. Englesbe, the Cyrenus G. Darling Sr., MD and Cyrenus G Darling Jr., MD Professor of Surgery, and faculty at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Surgeons are likely to see patients with a past history of opioid dependence or who are recovering from substance abuse. “Every effort should be made to avoid opioids in these patients. We have developed a Pain Optimization Pathway which facilitates no postoperative opioids for these and other patients. These patients are at high risk to relapse and surgeons must know who these patients are so they can provide optimal care,” Dr. Englesbe added.The limitations of this study as reported by the authors include the single-center design, the nondiverse racial makeup of the sample, and the difficulty of ascertaining the dosing and duration of opioid use, both prescription and illegal.
The investigators reported no disclosures relevant to this study. This study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, the American College of Surgeons, and other noncommercial sources.
SOURCE: Hilliard PE et al. JAMA Surg. 2018 Jul 11. doi: 10.1001/jamasurg.2018.2102.
at a large academic medical center, a cross-sectional observational study has determined.
Prescription or illegal opioid use can have profound implications for surgical outcomes and continued postoperative medication abuse. “Preoperative opioid use was associated with a greater burden of comorbid disease and multiple risk factors for poor recovery. ... Opioid-tolerant patients are at risk for opioid-associated adverse events and are less likely to discontinue opioid-based therapy after their surgery,” wrote Paul E. Hilliard, MD, and a team of researchers at the University of Michigan Health System. Although the question of preoperative opioid use has been examined and the Michigan findings are consistent with earlier estimates of prevalence (Ann Surg. 2017;265[4]:695-701), this study sought a more detailed profile of both the characteristics of these patients and the types of procedures correlated with opioid use.
Patient data were derived primarily from two ongoing institutional registries, the Michigan Genomics Initiative and the Analgesic Outcomes Study. Each of these projects involved recruiting nonemergency surgery patients to participate and self-report on pain and affect issues. Opioid use data were extracted from the preop anesthesia history and from physical examination. A total of 34,186 patients were recruited for this study; 54.2% were women, 89.1% were white, and the mean age was 53.1 years. Overall, 23.1% of these patients were taking opioids of various kinds, mostly by prescription along with nonprescription opioids and illegal drugs of other kinds.
The most common opioids found in this patient sample were hydrocodone bitartrate (59.4%), tramadol hydrochloride (21.2%) and oxycodone hydrochloride (18.5%), although the duration or frequency of use was not determined.
“In our experience, in surveys like this patients are pretty honest. [The data do not] track to their medical record, but was done privately for research. That having been said, I am sure there is significant underreporting,” study coauthor Michael J. Englesbe, MD, FACS, said in an interview. In addition to some nondisclosure by study participants, the exclusion of patients admitted to surgery from the ED could mean that 23.1% is a conservative estimate, he noted.
Patient characteristics included in the study (tobacco use, alcohol use, sleep apnea, pain, life satisfaction, depression, anxiety) were self-reported and validated using tools such as the Brief Pain Inventory, the Fibromyalgia Survey, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Procedural data were derived from patient records and ICD-10 data and rated via the ASA score and Charlson Comorbidity Index.
A multivariate analysis of patient characteristics found that age between 31 and 40, tobacco use, heavy alcohol use, pain score, depression, comorbidities reflected in a higher ASA score, and Charlson Comorbidity Score were all significant risk factors for presurgical opiate use.
Patients who were scheduled for surgical procedures involving lower extremities (adjusted odds ratio 3.61, 95% confidence interval, 2.81-4.64) were at the highest risk for opioid use, followed by pelvis surgery, excluding hip (aOR, 3.09, 95% CI, 1.88-5.08), upper arm or elbow (aOR, 3.07, 95% CI, 2.12-4.45), and spine surgery (aOR, 2.68, 95% CI, 2.15-3.32).
The study also broke out the data by presurgery opioid usage and surgery service. Of patients having spine neurosurgery, 55.1% were already taking opioids, and among those having orthopedic spine surgery, 65.1% were taking opioids. General surgery patients were not among those mostly likely to be using opioids (gastrointestinal surgery, 19.3% and endocrine surgery 14.3%). “Certain surgical services may be more likely to encounter patients with high comorbidities for opioid use, and more targeted opioid education strategies aimed at those services may help to mitigate risk in the postoperative period,” the authors wrote.
“All surgeons should take a preop pain history. They should ask about current pain and previous pain experiences. They should also ask about a history of substance use disorder. This should lead into a discussion of the pain expectations from the procedure. Patients should expect to be in pain, that is normal. Pain-free surgery is rare. If a patient has a complex pain history or takes chronic opioids, the surgeon should consider referring them to anesthesia for formal preop pain management planning and potentially weaning of opioid dose prior to elective surgery,” noted Dr. Englesbe, the Cyrenus G. Darling Sr., MD and Cyrenus G Darling Jr., MD Professor of Surgery, and faculty at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Surgeons are likely to see patients with a past history of opioid dependence or who are recovering from substance abuse. “Every effort should be made to avoid opioids in these patients. We have developed a Pain Optimization Pathway which facilitates no postoperative opioids for these and other patients. These patients are at high risk to relapse and surgeons must know who these patients are so they can provide optimal care,” Dr. Englesbe added.The limitations of this study as reported by the authors include the single-center design, the nondiverse racial makeup of the sample, and the difficulty of ascertaining the dosing and duration of opioid use, both prescription and illegal.
The investigators reported no disclosures relevant to this study. This study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, the American College of Surgeons, and other noncommercial sources.
SOURCE: Hilliard PE et al. JAMA Surg. 2018 Jul 11. doi: 10.1001/jamasurg.2018.2102.
FROM JAMA SURGERY
Key clinical point: Preoperative opioid use is prevalent in patients who are having spinal surgery and have depression.
Major finding:
Study details: An observational study of 34,186 surgical patients in the University of Michigan Health system.
Disclosures: The investigators reported no disclosures relevant to this study. This study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, the American College of Surgeons, and other noncommercial sources.
Source: Hilliard P E et al. JAMA Surg. 2018 Jul 11;. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2018.2102.
How to identify DVT faster in pediatric osteomyelitis
MALMO, SWEDEN – Early identification of deep vein thrombosis in children with acute hematogenous osteomyelitis is critical given the need to plan anticoagulation management around the high likelihood that such patients will undergo multiple surgeries, Lawson A.B. Copley, MD, said at the annual meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.
He and his coinvestigators have identified a handful of risk factors helpful in expediting recognition of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in children with suspected invasive infection of the musculoskeletal system.
“To improve the rate and timing of identification of DVT, we recommend performing early screening ultrasound on all children with these risk factors who are suspected of having acute hematogenous osteomyelitis,” declared Dr. Copley, professor of orthopaedic surgery and pediatrics at the University of Texas, Dallas.
Delayed diagnosis of DVT in the setting of acute hematogenous osteomyelitis (AHO) is common. Indeed, in a review of the experience at Children’s Medical Center Dallas during 2012-2014, the average time delay from ICU admission in patients suspected of having AHO to identification of DVT by ultrasound was 6.3 days.
“We’ve changed some things on the basis of that study in order to accelerate that timeline,” he explained.
Their major change was to identify actionable risk factors for DVT. This was accomplished by conducting a retrospective study of the EHR of nearly 902,000 Texas children during 2008-2016.
The study demonstrated that children with AHO complicated by DVT are, from the get-go, very different from AHO patients without DVT. They have higher illness severity of illness, are more likely to be admitted to the ICU, are prone to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection with prolonged bacteremia, and are much more likely to undergo multiple surgeries. Moreover, children with AHO and DVT differed substantially from other children with DVT: The dual diagnosis children lacked comorbid conditions, were prone to septic pulmonary emboli, didn’t develop postthrombotic syndrome marked by chronic venous stasis and ulcerations, and had invariably negative coagulopathy workups.
“There is no need, we feel, to perform a hypercoagulopathy workup in children with AHO complicated by DVT,” Dr. Copley said.
Drilling deeper into the data, he and his coinvestigators identified 224 new cases of DVT in the study population, for a prevalence of 2.5 per 10,000 children, along with 466 children with AHO. A total of 6% of children with AHO had DVT, and 12.1% of all children with DVT had AHO. The researchers then compared the demographics, laboratory parameters, and treatment in three cohorts: the 196 children with DVT without AHO, 28 with both AHO and DVT, and 438 with AHO without DVT.
Through this analysis, they came up with a list of risk factors warranting early screening ultrasound in children suspected of having AHO:
- An initial C-reactive protein level above 8 mg/dL, which was present in all 28 dual diagnosis children.
- ICU admission, which occurred in 19 of 28 (68%) children.
- A severity of illness score of at least 7 on a 10-point scale during the first several days in the hospital, present in 27 of the 28 children. The severity of illness scale was developed and validated by Dr. Copley and coworkers (J Pediatr Orthop. 2016 Oct 12. doi: 10.1097/BPO.0000000000000879).
- Bacteremia in the initial blood culture, present in 23 of 28 patients (82%).
- Just under 90% of the children with AHO and DVT had methicillin-resistant S. aureus, compared with 20% of those with AHO without DVT.
- Septic pulmonary emboli visualized on chest x-ray, a complication that occurred in 64% of the dual diagnosis group versus just 1% of patients with DVT without AHO.
- A band percentage of white blood cells greater than 1.5%, present in 86% of children with AHO and DVT.
More than 90% of children with AHO and DVT underwent surgery, with a mean of 2.7 surgeries per child, in contrast to the group with AHO without DVT, 55% of whom had surgery, with a mean of 0.7 surgeries per child.
Of note, there was no significant difference in the occurrence of pulmonary embolism between children with DVT without AHO versus those with DVT and AHO, with a rate of about 10% in both groups.
Dr. Copley reported having no relevant financial conflicts.
MALMO, SWEDEN – Early identification of deep vein thrombosis in children with acute hematogenous osteomyelitis is critical given the need to plan anticoagulation management around the high likelihood that such patients will undergo multiple surgeries, Lawson A.B. Copley, MD, said at the annual meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.
He and his coinvestigators have identified a handful of risk factors helpful in expediting recognition of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in children with suspected invasive infection of the musculoskeletal system.
“To improve the rate and timing of identification of DVT, we recommend performing early screening ultrasound on all children with these risk factors who are suspected of having acute hematogenous osteomyelitis,” declared Dr. Copley, professor of orthopaedic surgery and pediatrics at the University of Texas, Dallas.
Delayed diagnosis of DVT in the setting of acute hematogenous osteomyelitis (AHO) is common. Indeed, in a review of the experience at Children’s Medical Center Dallas during 2012-2014, the average time delay from ICU admission in patients suspected of having AHO to identification of DVT by ultrasound was 6.3 days.
“We’ve changed some things on the basis of that study in order to accelerate that timeline,” he explained.
Their major change was to identify actionable risk factors for DVT. This was accomplished by conducting a retrospective study of the EHR of nearly 902,000 Texas children during 2008-2016.
The study demonstrated that children with AHO complicated by DVT are, from the get-go, very different from AHO patients without DVT. They have higher illness severity of illness, are more likely to be admitted to the ICU, are prone to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection with prolonged bacteremia, and are much more likely to undergo multiple surgeries. Moreover, children with AHO and DVT differed substantially from other children with DVT: The dual diagnosis children lacked comorbid conditions, were prone to septic pulmonary emboli, didn’t develop postthrombotic syndrome marked by chronic venous stasis and ulcerations, and had invariably negative coagulopathy workups.
“There is no need, we feel, to perform a hypercoagulopathy workup in children with AHO complicated by DVT,” Dr. Copley said.
Drilling deeper into the data, he and his coinvestigators identified 224 new cases of DVT in the study population, for a prevalence of 2.5 per 10,000 children, along with 466 children with AHO. A total of 6% of children with AHO had DVT, and 12.1% of all children with DVT had AHO. The researchers then compared the demographics, laboratory parameters, and treatment in three cohorts: the 196 children with DVT without AHO, 28 with both AHO and DVT, and 438 with AHO without DVT.
Through this analysis, they came up with a list of risk factors warranting early screening ultrasound in children suspected of having AHO:
- An initial C-reactive protein level above 8 mg/dL, which was present in all 28 dual diagnosis children.
- ICU admission, which occurred in 19 of 28 (68%) children.
- A severity of illness score of at least 7 on a 10-point scale during the first several days in the hospital, present in 27 of the 28 children. The severity of illness scale was developed and validated by Dr. Copley and coworkers (J Pediatr Orthop. 2016 Oct 12. doi: 10.1097/BPO.0000000000000879).
- Bacteremia in the initial blood culture, present in 23 of 28 patients (82%).
- Just under 90% of the children with AHO and DVT had methicillin-resistant S. aureus, compared with 20% of those with AHO without DVT.
- Septic pulmonary emboli visualized on chest x-ray, a complication that occurred in 64% of the dual diagnosis group versus just 1% of patients with DVT without AHO.
- A band percentage of white blood cells greater than 1.5%, present in 86% of children with AHO and DVT.
More than 90% of children with AHO and DVT underwent surgery, with a mean of 2.7 surgeries per child, in contrast to the group with AHO without DVT, 55% of whom had surgery, with a mean of 0.7 surgeries per child.
Of note, there was no significant difference in the occurrence of pulmonary embolism between children with DVT without AHO versus those with DVT and AHO, with a rate of about 10% in both groups.
Dr. Copley reported having no relevant financial conflicts.
MALMO, SWEDEN – Early identification of deep vein thrombosis in children with acute hematogenous osteomyelitis is critical given the need to plan anticoagulation management around the high likelihood that such patients will undergo multiple surgeries, Lawson A.B. Copley, MD, said at the annual meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.
He and his coinvestigators have identified a handful of risk factors helpful in expediting recognition of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in children with suspected invasive infection of the musculoskeletal system.
“To improve the rate and timing of identification of DVT, we recommend performing early screening ultrasound on all children with these risk factors who are suspected of having acute hematogenous osteomyelitis,” declared Dr. Copley, professor of orthopaedic surgery and pediatrics at the University of Texas, Dallas.
Delayed diagnosis of DVT in the setting of acute hematogenous osteomyelitis (AHO) is common. Indeed, in a review of the experience at Children’s Medical Center Dallas during 2012-2014, the average time delay from ICU admission in patients suspected of having AHO to identification of DVT by ultrasound was 6.3 days.
“We’ve changed some things on the basis of that study in order to accelerate that timeline,” he explained.
Their major change was to identify actionable risk factors for DVT. This was accomplished by conducting a retrospective study of the EHR of nearly 902,000 Texas children during 2008-2016.
The study demonstrated that children with AHO complicated by DVT are, from the get-go, very different from AHO patients without DVT. They have higher illness severity of illness, are more likely to be admitted to the ICU, are prone to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection with prolonged bacteremia, and are much more likely to undergo multiple surgeries. Moreover, children with AHO and DVT differed substantially from other children with DVT: The dual diagnosis children lacked comorbid conditions, were prone to septic pulmonary emboli, didn’t develop postthrombotic syndrome marked by chronic venous stasis and ulcerations, and had invariably negative coagulopathy workups.
“There is no need, we feel, to perform a hypercoagulopathy workup in children with AHO complicated by DVT,” Dr. Copley said.
Drilling deeper into the data, he and his coinvestigators identified 224 new cases of DVT in the study population, for a prevalence of 2.5 per 10,000 children, along with 466 children with AHO. A total of 6% of children with AHO had DVT, and 12.1% of all children with DVT had AHO. The researchers then compared the demographics, laboratory parameters, and treatment in three cohorts: the 196 children with DVT without AHO, 28 with both AHO and DVT, and 438 with AHO without DVT.
Through this analysis, they came up with a list of risk factors warranting early screening ultrasound in children suspected of having AHO:
- An initial C-reactive protein level above 8 mg/dL, which was present in all 28 dual diagnosis children.
- ICU admission, which occurred in 19 of 28 (68%) children.
- A severity of illness score of at least 7 on a 10-point scale during the first several days in the hospital, present in 27 of the 28 children. The severity of illness scale was developed and validated by Dr. Copley and coworkers (J Pediatr Orthop. 2016 Oct 12. doi: 10.1097/BPO.0000000000000879).
- Bacteremia in the initial blood culture, present in 23 of 28 patients (82%).
- Just under 90% of the children with AHO and DVT had methicillin-resistant S. aureus, compared with 20% of those with AHO without DVT.
- Septic pulmonary emboli visualized on chest x-ray, a complication that occurred in 64% of the dual diagnosis group versus just 1% of patients with DVT without AHO.
- A band percentage of white blood cells greater than 1.5%, present in 86% of children with AHO and DVT.
More than 90% of children with AHO and DVT underwent surgery, with a mean of 2.7 surgeries per child, in contrast to the group with AHO without DVT, 55% of whom had surgery, with a mean of 0.7 surgeries per child.
Of note, there was no significant difference in the occurrence of pulmonary embolism between children with DVT without AHO versus those with DVT and AHO, with a rate of about 10% in both groups.
Dr. Copley reported having no relevant financial conflicts.
REPORTING FROM ESPID 2018
Key clinical point: Osteomyelitis patients with deep vein thrombosis are much sicker than those without DVT.
Major finding:
Study details: This was a retrospective study of the medical records of more than 900,000 Texas children.
Disclosures: Dr. Copley reported having no relevant financial conflicts.
Too much to disagree on to let politics enter an office visit
“I can’t believe you’re drinking that.”
The young woman across the desk from me seemed perplexed, and I didn’t know why.
I’m one of those people who always has something to drink in front of me while working. A bottle of Costco green tea, Diet Coke, coffee. I also have a SodaStream gadget at my office, and that bottle is what I had on my desk at the moment.
I naively said “Why? I doubt it’s any worse for me than any other soda.”
That sure set her off, and I got a lecture about SodaStream being an Israeli company and her opinions on the Middle East, Israel, Palestine, etc. I listened politely for a moment, then redirected her back to the reason for her visit.
Not being someone who follows the news in detail, I‘d been unaware there was any controversy behind the soda bottle on my desk that morning. To me, it was just my choice of beverage.
The trouble here is that it’s possible to politicize pretty much anything in a divided world. I try to stay, for better or worse, ignorant of such things. My soft drink choice reflects nothing more than what I felt like drinking when I went back to my office’s tiny break room between appointments.
If you dig far enough into any company’s – or person’s – background, you’ll find something you disagree with. Just like any drug I prescribe will have side effects.
It’s for this reason that I keep politics out of my office. Patients, such as this lady, may express theirs, but I’ll never express mine. Too many in this world see each other in an “us vs. them” frame, quick to declare someone with different views as the enemy, rather than another decent person with an honest difference of opinion.
And it’s irrelevant to what I’m trying to achieve at my office anyway – caring for patients.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“I can’t believe you’re drinking that.”
The young woman across the desk from me seemed perplexed, and I didn’t know why.
I’m one of those people who always has something to drink in front of me while working. A bottle of Costco green tea, Diet Coke, coffee. I also have a SodaStream gadget at my office, and that bottle is what I had on my desk at the moment.
I naively said “Why? I doubt it’s any worse for me than any other soda.”
That sure set her off, and I got a lecture about SodaStream being an Israeli company and her opinions on the Middle East, Israel, Palestine, etc. I listened politely for a moment, then redirected her back to the reason for her visit.
Not being someone who follows the news in detail, I‘d been unaware there was any controversy behind the soda bottle on my desk that morning. To me, it was just my choice of beverage.
The trouble here is that it’s possible to politicize pretty much anything in a divided world. I try to stay, for better or worse, ignorant of such things. My soft drink choice reflects nothing more than what I felt like drinking when I went back to my office’s tiny break room between appointments.
If you dig far enough into any company’s – or person’s – background, you’ll find something you disagree with. Just like any drug I prescribe will have side effects.
It’s for this reason that I keep politics out of my office. Patients, such as this lady, may express theirs, but I’ll never express mine. Too many in this world see each other in an “us vs. them” frame, quick to declare someone with different views as the enemy, rather than another decent person with an honest difference of opinion.
And it’s irrelevant to what I’m trying to achieve at my office anyway – caring for patients.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“I can’t believe you’re drinking that.”
The young woman across the desk from me seemed perplexed, and I didn’t know why.
I’m one of those people who always has something to drink in front of me while working. A bottle of Costco green tea, Diet Coke, coffee. I also have a SodaStream gadget at my office, and that bottle is what I had on my desk at the moment.
I naively said “Why? I doubt it’s any worse for me than any other soda.”
That sure set her off, and I got a lecture about SodaStream being an Israeli company and her opinions on the Middle East, Israel, Palestine, etc. I listened politely for a moment, then redirected her back to the reason for her visit.
Not being someone who follows the news in detail, I‘d been unaware there was any controversy behind the soda bottle on my desk that morning. To me, it was just my choice of beverage.
The trouble here is that it’s possible to politicize pretty much anything in a divided world. I try to stay, for better or worse, ignorant of such things. My soft drink choice reflects nothing more than what I felt like drinking when I went back to my office’s tiny break room between appointments.
If you dig far enough into any company’s – or person’s – background, you’ll find something you disagree with. Just like any drug I prescribe will have side effects.
It’s for this reason that I keep politics out of my office. Patients, such as this lady, may express theirs, but I’ll never express mine. Too many in this world see each other in an “us vs. them” frame, quick to declare someone with different views as the enemy, rather than another decent person with an honest difference of opinion.
And it’s irrelevant to what I’m trying to achieve at my office anyway – caring for patients.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Melanoma survival shorter in those given high dose glucocorticoids for ipilimumab-induced hypophysitis
than did patients taking low-dose steroids for the adverse event, according to a new retrospective analysis in Cancer.
“Treatment with high-dose glucocorticoids does not appear to confer any obvious advantage to patients with IH (ipilimumab-induced hypophysitis) and may negatively affect tumor response to CPI (checkpoint-inhibitor therapy),” wrote Alexander Faje, MD, a neuroendocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. “We recommend against the routine use of higher doses in these patients and that such treatment should be reserved for clinical indications like visual compromise or perhaps for intractable headache.”
Hypophysitis after treatment with a CTLA-4 inhibitor, such as ipilimumab, can approach 12%, though it is much less common with the checkpoint inhibitors that target PD-1 and PD-L1. Past studies examining the effects of glucocorticoids for immune-related adverse events have compared patients with severe events to those with minimal or no events. Since emergence of hypophysitis correlates with better overall survival, this is a flawed approach, the researchers said.
For their study, the researchers compared groups of patients with the same immune-related adverse events who received treatment with varying amounts of glucocorticoids.
They reviewed outcomes for 64 melanoma patients who had received ipilimumab monotherapy and were diagnosed with ipilimumab-induced hypophysitis treated in the Partners Healthcare system. Fourteen patients had received low-dose glucocorticoids, defined as a maximum average daily dose of 7.5 mg of prednisone or the equivalent. Fifty patients received high-dose glucocorticoids, defined as anything above that amount.
Overall survival and time to treatment failure were significantly higher in the low-dose group than the high-dose group (P = .002 for OS and P = .001 for TTF). Median overall survival was 23.3 months and time to treatment failure was 11.4 months in those given high-dose steroids. Median overall survival had not been reached in those given low-dose steroids.
While the findings are preliminary, the authors noted they may have implications for managing other immune-related adverse events. “Although the use of lower doses of immunosuppressive medications may be less of an option in many circumstances for other (immune-related adverse events), therapeutic parsimony would seem desirable with more tailored regimens as the biologic mechanisms underpinning these processes are further elucidated.”
SOURCE: Faje AT et al. Cancer. 2018 Jul 5.
The study results provide further evidence that hypophysitis appears to be an adverse effect of ipilimumab therapy that is linked with improved outcomes in melanoma. As hypophysitis tends to be self-limited, it can be treated safely with replacement therapy rather than high-dose steroid therapy, which was associated with reduced overall survival.
But the low number of patients on low-dose glucocorticoids – just 14 – is a limitation of the study and the group’s favorable outcomes could have been due to chance alone. Further, the 7.5-mg cut-off for high- vs. low-dose steroid therapy is somewhat arbitrary.
In support of the study’s overall conclusions, however, exploratory analyses have produced similar findings at somewhat higher cut-offs.
As the mechanism of hypophysitis is somewhat distinct compared with other immune-checkpoint toxicities, it might not be appropriate to generalize these findings to other toxic responses to these drugs.
The mechanisms of toxicities related to immune-checkpoint inhibitors are still not well defined. Unraveling those mechanisms may identify patients at high risk and hold the potential for aiding in the design of novel therapeutics that unleash antitumor immunity. Glucocorticoids are a fairly effective treatment for immune-related toxicities but remain a blunt, nonspecific way to suppress aberrant immunity. Designing inhibitors of culprit cellular populations or cytokines may combat toxicity without compromising the efficacy of immune therapy or promoting systemic immunosuppression.
Douglas B. Johnson, MD, is with Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, Tenn. He made his remarks in an editorial (Cancer 2018 Jul 5. doi: 10.1002/cncr.31627.
The study results provide further evidence that hypophysitis appears to be an adverse effect of ipilimumab therapy that is linked with improved outcomes in melanoma. As hypophysitis tends to be self-limited, it can be treated safely with replacement therapy rather than high-dose steroid therapy, which was associated with reduced overall survival.
But the low number of patients on low-dose glucocorticoids – just 14 – is a limitation of the study and the group’s favorable outcomes could have been due to chance alone. Further, the 7.5-mg cut-off for high- vs. low-dose steroid therapy is somewhat arbitrary.
In support of the study’s overall conclusions, however, exploratory analyses have produced similar findings at somewhat higher cut-offs.
As the mechanism of hypophysitis is somewhat distinct compared with other immune-checkpoint toxicities, it might not be appropriate to generalize these findings to other toxic responses to these drugs.
The mechanisms of toxicities related to immune-checkpoint inhibitors are still not well defined. Unraveling those mechanisms may identify patients at high risk and hold the potential for aiding in the design of novel therapeutics that unleash antitumor immunity. Glucocorticoids are a fairly effective treatment for immune-related toxicities but remain a blunt, nonspecific way to suppress aberrant immunity. Designing inhibitors of culprit cellular populations or cytokines may combat toxicity without compromising the efficacy of immune therapy or promoting systemic immunosuppression.
Douglas B. Johnson, MD, is with Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, Tenn. He made his remarks in an editorial (Cancer 2018 Jul 5. doi: 10.1002/cncr.31627.
The study results provide further evidence that hypophysitis appears to be an adverse effect of ipilimumab therapy that is linked with improved outcomes in melanoma. As hypophysitis tends to be self-limited, it can be treated safely with replacement therapy rather than high-dose steroid therapy, which was associated with reduced overall survival.
But the low number of patients on low-dose glucocorticoids – just 14 – is a limitation of the study and the group’s favorable outcomes could have been due to chance alone. Further, the 7.5-mg cut-off for high- vs. low-dose steroid therapy is somewhat arbitrary.
In support of the study’s overall conclusions, however, exploratory analyses have produced similar findings at somewhat higher cut-offs.
As the mechanism of hypophysitis is somewhat distinct compared with other immune-checkpoint toxicities, it might not be appropriate to generalize these findings to other toxic responses to these drugs.
The mechanisms of toxicities related to immune-checkpoint inhibitors are still not well defined. Unraveling those mechanisms may identify patients at high risk and hold the potential for aiding in the design of novel therapeutics that unleash antitumor immunity. Glucocorticoids are a fairly effective treatment for immune-related toxicities but remain a blunt, nonspecific way to suppress aberrant immunity. Designing inhibitors of culprit cellular populations or cytokines may combat toxicity without compromising the efficacy of immune therapy or promoting systemic immunosuppression.
Douglas B. Johnson, MD, is with Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, Tenn. He made his remarks in an editorial (Cancer 2018 Jul 5. doi: 10.1002/cncr.31627.
than did patients taking low-dose steroids for the adverse event, according to a new retrospective analysis in Cancer.
“Treatment with high-dose glucocorticoids does not appear to confer any obvious advantage to patients with IH (ipilimumab-induced hypophysitis) and may negatively affect tumor response to CPI (checkpoint-inhibitor therapy),” wrote Alexander Faje, MD, a neuroendocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. “We recommend against the routine use of higher doses in these patients and that such treatment should be reserved for clinical indications like visual compromise or perhaps for intractable headache.”
Hypophysitis after treatment with a CTLA-4 inhibitor, such as ipilimumab, can approach 12%, though it is much less common with the checkpoint inhibitors that target PD-1 and PD-L1. Past studies examining the effects of glucocorticoids for immune-related adverse events have compared patients with severe events to those with minimal or no events. Since emergence of hypophysitis correlates with better overall survival, this is a flawed approach, the researchers said.
For their study, the researchers compared groups of patients with the same immune-related adverse events who received treatment with varying amounts of glucocorticoids.
They reviewed outcomes for 64 melanoma patients who had received ipilimumab monotherapy and were diagnosed with ipilimumab-induced hypophysitis treated in the Partners Healthcare system. Fourteen patients had received low-dose glucocorticoids, defined as a maximum average daily dose of 7.5 mg of prednisone or the equivalent. Fifty patients received high-dose glucocorticoids, defined as anything above that amount.
Overall survival and time to treatment failure were significantly higher in the low-dose group than the high-dose group (P = .002 for OS and P = .001 for TTF). Median overall survival was 23.3 months and time to treatment failure was 11.4 months in those given high-dose steroids. Median overall survival had not been reached in those given low-dose steroids.
While the findings are preliminary, the authors noted they may have implications for managing other immune-related adverse events. “Although the use of lower doses of immunosuppressive medications may be less of an option in many circumstances for other (immune-related adverse events), therapeutic parsimony would seem desirable with more tailored regimens as the biologic mechanisms underpinning these processes are further elucidated.”
SOURCE: Faje AT et al. Cancer. 2018 Jul 5.
than did patients taking low-dose steroids for the adverse event, according to a new retrospective analysis in Cancer.
“Treatment with high-dose glucocorticoids does not appear to confer any obvious advantage to patients with IH (ipilimumab-induced hypophysitis) and may negatively affect tumor response to CPI (checkpoint-inhibitor therapy),” wrote Alexander Faje, MD, a neuroendocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. “We recommend against the routine use of higher doses in these patients and that such treatment should be reserved for clinical indications like visual compromise or perhaps for intractable headache.”
Hypophysitis after treatment with a CTLA-4 inhibitor, such as ipilimumab, can approach 12%, though it is much less common with the checkpoint inhibitors that target PD-1 and PD-L1. Past studies examining the effects of glucocorticoids for immune-related adverse events have compared patients with severe events to those with minimal or no events. Since emergence of hypophysitis correlates with better overall survival, this is a flawed approach, the researchers said.
For their study, the researchers compared groups of patients with the same immune-related adverse events who received treatment with varying amounts of glucocorticoids.
They reviewed outcomes for 64 melanoma patients who had received ipilimumab monotherapy and were diagnosed with ipilimumab-induced hypophysitis treated in the Partners Healthcare system. Fourteen patients had received low-dose glucocorticoids, defined as a maximum average daily dose of 7.5 mg of prednisone or the equivalent. Fifty patients received high-dose glucocorticoids, defined as anything above that amount.
Overall survival and time to treatment failure were significantly higher in the low-dose group than the high-dose group (P = .002 for OS and P = .001 for TTF). Median overall survival was 23.3 months and time to treatment failure was 11.4 months in those given high-dose steroids. Median overall survival had not been reached in those given low-dose steroids.
While the findings are preliminary, the authors noted they may have implications for managing other immune-related adverse events. “Although the use of lower doses of immunosuppressive medications may be less of an option in many circumstances for other (immune-related adverse events), therapeutic parsimony would seem desirable with more tailored regimens as the biologic mechanisms underpinning these processes are further elucidated.”
SOURCE: Faje AT et al. Cancer. 2018 Jul 5.
FROM CANCER
Key clinical point: Significantly lower overall survival and shorter time to treatment failure was seen in melanoma patients taking higher doses of glucocorticoids for ipilimumab-induced hypophysitis than in those taking lower doses.
Major finding: Median overall survival was 23.3 months and time to treatment failure was 11.4 months in those given high-dose steroids. Median overall survival had not been reached in those given low-dose steroids.
Study details: A retrospective review of 64 melanoma patients on single-agent ipilimumab therapy who were given glucocorticoids for ipilimumab-induced hypophysitis.
Disclosures: No funding source disclosed. The authors made no disclosures related to the submitted work.
Source: Faje AT et al. Cancer 2018 Jul 5.
Dr. Leslie Citrome: Addressing tardive dyskinesia
Sanjay Gupta, MD, of the University of Buffalo, spoke in an MDedge video earlier this year on the importance of using the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale to screen for TD and treating the disorder with vesicular monoamine transporter-2 inhibitors.
In the episode, Dr. Citrome notes that despite recent advances in pharmacological options, clinicians can be challenged by TD.
Sanjay Gupta, MD, of the University of Buffalo, spoke in an MDedge video earlier this year on the importance of using the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale to screen for TD and treating the disorder with vesicular monoamine transporter-2 inhibitors.
In the episode, Dr. Citrome notes that despite recent advances in pharmacological options, clinicians can be challenged by TD.
Sanjay Gupta, MD, of the University of Buffalo, spoke in an MDedge video earlier this year on the importance of using the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale to screen for TD and treating the disorder with vesicular monoamine transporter-2 inhibitors.
In the episode, Dr. Citrome notes that despite recent advances in pharmacological options, clinicians can be challenged by TD.
Bug Bites More Than Just a Nuisance
As if it were not bad enough that illnesses from mosquito, tick, and flea bites tripled between 2004 and 2016, 9 new germs spread by mosquitoes and ticks were discovered or introduced into the US in the same 13 years.
According to the CDC’s first summary collectively examining data trends for all nationally notifiable diseases caused by the bite of an infected mosquito, tick, or flea, the most common tickborne diseases in 2016 were Lyme disease and ehrlichiosis/anaplasmosis. The most common mosquito-borne viruses were West Nile, dengue, and Zika.
The increase is due to many factors, the CDC says, but 1 issue is that mosquitoes and ticks are moving into new areas, putting more people at risk. The US is “not fully prepared” to meet the public health threat, the CDC warns: About 80% of vector control organizations lack critical prevention and control capacities. Reducing the spread of the diseases and responding effectively to outbreaks will require additional capacity at the state and local levels for tracking, diagnosing, and reporting cases.
As if it were not bad enough that illnesses from mosquito, tick, and flea bites tripled between 2004 and 2016, 9 new germs spread by mosquitoes and ticks were discovered or introduced into the US in the same 13 years.
According to the CDC’s first summary collectively examining data trends for all nationally notifiable diseases caused by the bite of an infected mosquito, tick, or flea, the most common tickborne diseases in 2016 were Lyme disease and ehrlichiosis/anaplasmosis. The most common mosquito-borne viruses were West Nile, dengue, and Zika.
The increase is due to many factors, the CDC says, but 1 issue is that mosquitoes and ticks are moving into new areas, putting more people at risk. The US is “not fully prepared” to meet the public health threat, the CDC warns: About 80% of vector control organizations lack critical prevention and control capacities. Reducing the spread of the diseases and responding effectively to outbreaks will require additional capacity at the state and local levels for tracking, diagnosing, and reporting cases.
As if it were not bad enough that illnesses from mosquito, tick, and flea bites tripled between 2004 and 2016, 9 new germs spread by mosquitoes and ticks were discovered or introduced into the US in the same 13 years.
According to the CDC’s first summary collectively examining data trends for all nationally notifiable diseases caused by the bite of an infected mosquito, tick, or flea, the most common tickborne diseases in 2016 were Lyme disease and ehrlichiosis/anaplasmosis. The most common mosquito-borne viruses were West Nile, dengue, and Zika.
The increase is due to many factors, the CDC says, but 1 issue is that mosquitoes and ticks are moving into new areas, putting more people at risk. The US is “not fully prepared” to meet the public health threat, the CDC warns: About 80% of vector control organizations lack critical prevention and control capacities. Reducing the spread of the diseases and responding effectively to outbreaks will require additional capacity at the state and local levels for tracking, diagnosing, and reporting cases.
Federal Health Care Data Trends: Neurology
Data seem to indicate that service members and veterans may be at an increased risk of acquiring multiple neurologic diseases or injuries. The very nature of a career in the military often comes with a higher risk of sustaining a traumatic brain injury (TBI) either through combat or physical training, but other serious neurologic disorders seem to affect veterans disproportionally compared with those who did not serve in the Armed Forces.
Click here to continue reading.
Data seem to indicate that service members and veterans may be at an increased risk of acquiring multiple neurologic diseases or injuries. The very nature of a career in the military often comes with a higher risk of sustaining a traumatic brain injury (TBI) either through combat or physical training, but other serious neurologic disorders seem to affect veterans disproportionally compared with those who did not serve in the Armed Forces.
Click here to continue reading.
Data seem to indicate that service members and veterans may be at an increased risk of acquiring multiple neurologic diseases or injuries. The very nature of a career in the military often comes with a higher risk of sustaining a traumatic brain injury (TBI) either through combat or physical training, but other serious neurologic disorders seem to affect veterans disproportionally compared with those who did not serve in the Armed Forces.
