Changes in Expert Recommendations and Global Practice Patterns from 2012-2015: Results from an Annually Updated Online Decision Aid for Multiple Myeloma (MM)

Background
Clinical practice guidelines for MM list many alternative therapeutic options with an equivalent category of evidence but lack recommendations on the best approaches for individual patient cases. To provide clinicians with expert guidance on treatment options for defined patient scenarios, we developed and updated an interactive, online decision aid that allows users to enter specific disease and patient characteristics, enter their planned treatment, and then compare their choice of therapy with those of an MM expert panel for that scenario. Here we report data from the most recent version (2015) of this tool, capturing changes in expert recommendations and treatment trends for MM over time and evaluating the impact of this online tool on clinical care.

Methods
Each of 3 annual updates to the tool were developed with input from a panel of 5 MM experts. The individual experts provided treatment recommendations for multiple patient scenarios across the settings of induction therapy, maintenance therapy, and therapy for relapsed/refractory MM. A series of pull-down menus allowed users to select individual patient and disease characteristics identified by experts as important to consider when making treatment choices. These characteristics included: eligibility for autologous stem cell transplantation (for induction therapy only), results of chromosome analysis (cytogenetics/FISH), ECOG performance status, risk of renal insufficiency or peripheral neuropathy, previous therapy and depth of response (for maintenance and relapsed/refractory settings), and cardiac or pulmonary dysfunction (for relapsed/refractory setting). Users were then asked to state their intended management approach for that particular patient scenario. Once completed, recommendations for that scenario from each of the experts were displayed, and users were asked to indicate the impact of the expert recommendations on their treatment choice.

Results
Expert recommendations spanning the continuum of care were compiled in October 2012, November 2013, and March 2015 for the 3 different MM tool updates. As for earlier versions of the MM tool, each of the experts in the 2015 update provided recommendations for 32 case scenarios for induction therapy, for a total of 160 possible induction recommendations. Comparing overall induction therapy recommendations the use of bortezomib/lenalidomide/dexamethasone was approximately 40% in both 2013 and 2015, whereas the use of carfilzomib-containing regimens increased from 5% to 17%. None of the experts chose regimens with melphalan as induction therapy in 2015. In the relapsed/refractory setting, the use of newer therapeutic approaches continued to grow especially in the setting of patients who did not respond to induction therapy or relapsed within 6 months. For example, in those with prior proteasome inhibitor (PI) therapy, the selection of carfilzomib/lenalidomide/dexamethasone by experts rose from 11% to 38% from 2013 to 2015 with pomalidomide and lenalidomide selected for 20% to 25% of cases in the most recent tool. For prior IMiD and PI, the experts selected a new combination of pomalidomide with a PI (either bortezomib or carfilzomib) and dexamethasone in 55% of the case scenarios in 2015.

To date, 170 different clinicians sought guidance on more than 259 patient case scenarios using the 2015 decision support tool. In the subset of cases (n = 104) in which users reported how the tool affected their management of patients with MM, 68% indicated the expert recommendations either confirmed or changed their intended treatment (22% changed; 46% confirmed), whereas 17% indicated that there would be barriers to implementing the expert recommendations, and 5% said they disagreed with the experts’ recommendations.

Conclusions
Expert opinions regarding optimal MM therapy continue to evolve with new evidence. Our data show that interactive online therapy decision aids that provide expert recommendations to clinicians for specific case scenarios can aid decision making and capture practice trends in this rapidly evolving environment. Preliminary data suggest that most clinicians using the online decision aid either confirmed or changed their treatment approaches for specific MM patient case scenarios based on expert recommendations. A detailed and updated analysis of expert and user data will be presented.