Management of Elderly Patients with Plasma Cell Myeloma.

Plasma cell myeloma (PCM) is a hematologic malignancy that primarily affects the elderly. Approximately two-thirds of patients are aged 65 years or older at diagnosis. Major advances in testing, treatment, and supportive care have resulted in substantial improvement in overall survival in younger, standard-risk, PCM patients over the past 3 decades. However, this positive impact progressively diminishes with advancing age, with some studies showing no improvement in survival outcomes in the elderly. Slow improvement in survival for elderly PCM patients is likely multifactorial, influenced by factors such as age-related physiologic changes, increased comorbidities, decreased treatment tolerance, socioeconomic barriers, and possible differences in disease biology. The standard approach of basing treatment decisions on age and performance status does not account for this complexity, and can be insufficient to determine the risks and benefits of treatment. Comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) produces a more thorough iteration of the factors influencing an individual's treatment risk, and can potentially identify targets for intervention to lower risk. Ongoing studies are looking at developing and refining the tools available for risk screening and assessment. Treating elderly PCM patients with novel agent-based regimens with or without autologous stem cell transplantation has improved response rates and survival in some studies, but elderly PCM patients have benefitted less than their younger counterparts from recent advances in PCM treatment. Personalizing treatment decisions, based on predictions of risk, determined by geriatric assessment, and response, determined by precision medicine (our understanding of the genetic, molecular, and cellular pathways that drive an individual's cancer) will help maximize the benefit and minimize the risk of PCM treatment for each patient. Continued evaluation of new strategies and treatments for PCM in clinical trials specifically designed for elderly patients is needed to continue to improve outcomes for elderly PCM patients in the future.