Descriptive Analysis and Review of Utilization of Rituximab In the Maintenance Treatment of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma In Five University Teaching Hospitals In Quebec, Canada.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Abstract 1511 Background: Rituximab, a monoclonal antibody targeting CD20 receptors widely used in the treatment of non-hodgkin lymphoma, is now being used in various indications, on and off-label. For five University Hospitals in Quebec, Canada, rituximab represents more than 10% of the total drug expenses. Pharmacy managers gave the Therapeutic Drug Management Program (TDMP – www.pgtm.qc.ca) the mandate to evaluate rituximab use in those centers. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to describe rituximab use for all indications in our hospitals and to review the utilization of rituximab in maintenance therapy for follicular lymphoma according to predefined criteria. Methods: A review of pharmacy databases was performed to identify patients who received rituximab between April 1st 2008 and March 31st 2009. Every patient file containing rituximab was reviewed. Patients’ medical records were also reviewed for pathology and side effects. No sampling was performed. Results: At least one dose of rituximab was administered to 797 adult patients during the study period. Median age was 62. The most frequent indications were follicular lymphoma (36%) and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (26%) followed by chronic lymphoid leukemia (CLL) (8%). Various off label indications, including idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, hemolytic anemia and Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia, represented 30% of our population. At the time of data analysis, 42% of patients were still treated with rituximab, 45% had finished their planned treatment and 6% had discontinued treatment because of adverse events or disease progression. Thirty-eight patients (4.8%) died during the study period. Rituximab was also used in 41 pediatric patients for various indications, mostly for nephrotic syndrome (27%). The evaluation of patients outcome for off-label indications could not be performed due to the complexity, variety and chronic courses of diseases treated. For the 232 patients receiving rituximab as maintenance therapy, only 76% of patients had follicular lymphoma. Of these, 53% received rituximab maintenance after first-line treatment with R-CVP and 19% after R-CHOP. Only one patient receiving maintenance treatment stopped therapy because of disease progression. No death was reported. Conformity to utilization criteria was excellent for dose and frequency (100% and 99%) but lower for duration and indication (87 % and 70%). Of note, 13% exceeded the planned two years treatment length and fourteen patients received maintenance therapy following induction chemotherapy for CLL. Conclusions: Rituximab was used in various on and off label indications and utilization criteria should be developed and followed in each centers. Pharmacy and therapeutics committees should also request an annual summary of efficacy and security for the off-label indications. Almost a third of patients treated with maintenance rituximab did not receive it for follicular lymphoma. A review of the literature should be performed and recommendations be made for other indications for maintenance treatment. Disclosures: Off Label Use: review of utilisation or rituximab: non hematologic indications.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".