Lucia Masarova, MD, on Transfusion-Related Cost Findings From SIMPLIFY-1

HemeToday spoke with Dr. Lucia Masarova, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, about data from the SIMPLIFY-1 trial on total medical costs and time burden related to outpatient transfusion visits between patients with myelofibrosis treated with momelotinib or ruxolitinib.

“We actually showed that, indeed, decreasing transfusion dependency led to savings in terms of overall medical cost that were seen across all patients enrolled, which was quite a large study. It included 215 patients for ruxolitinib and 217 for momelotinib in head-to-head comparisons,” Dr. Masarova said. “It also showed the same data in medical cost-saving for baseline anemia-dependent patients, as well as patients over the age of 65.”

“Overall, in this study, we showed that momelotinib does lead to decreased transfusion dependency and transfusion usage in our patients, which also translated into medical cost-[saving], health care cost-saving, and, more importantly to me, time burden saving for our patients,” Dr. Masarova summarized.