What Is the Impact of Imaging Frequency in FL Clinical Trials?

Sarah Rutherford, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine, speaks with Chadi Nabhan, MD, MBA, FACP, about the research she presented during the 2023 American Society of Clinician Oncology Annual Meeting.

Dr. Rutherford and colleagues previously reported that bone marrow biopsies are “irrelevant for response assessment in most patients” with follicular lymphoma on trials. Due to this, they investigated the impact of imaging frequency in clinical trials for patients with follicular lymphoma, hypothesizing that there would be no difference in progression-free survival when imaging was performed less often than required by trials.

“Both in clinical practice and in clinical trials, imaging is done quite frequently, and it has a lot of negative aspects to it,” Dr. Rutherford said. “[There is the] radiation exposure potential for secondary malignancies, it’s very anxiety provoking for patients and then, of course, the cost.”

In this video, Drs. Rutherford and Nabhan discuss the findings of the study, its real-world implications for patients and clinical trials, and what the future might hold.