The Patient, the Hematologist, and the Unexpected

The Practice Forum will focus on two areas of unexpected results encountered commonly enough to raise the interest of the community of practitioners who are members of ASH. It will also focus on the public policy environment that will be shaping our practice as we enter the 51st year of ASH. Dr. Philip Greipp will discuss the dilemma of incidental finding and monoclonal proteins. Leading myeloma groups advise that asymptomatic patients with myeloma be observed and not necessarily treated. But what happens if an MRI shows one or more lesions in an asymptomatic patient? Dr. Malik Juweid will discuss the situation in which a PET scan on a patient in follow-up has one hot spot in a region inaccessible to simple biopsy and a normal CT scan. What does one do? Could it be a false positive? Ms. Mila Becker and Ms. Ellen Riker will review the policy and fiscal changes likely to affect hematology practice in 2009.