James Bussel, MD, explains what factors should play more of a central role in immune thrombocytopenia treatment decisions.
Transcript
Over the years, it has become very obvious that quality of life is a major problem for patients with ITP.
It’s probably weakly correlated with the platelet count, but certainly the platelet count isn’t everything, and fixing the platelet count isn’t always effective for helping quality of life.
That ranges to a wide group of things. It could be fatigue, could be depression, could be low energy levels, could be sexual dysfunction, could be inability to process well, affecting work. Could be inability to have the energy to do things well at work. A whole host of things.
It’s especially important to bring those up because a lot of people have a knee-jerk reaction. The doctor says, “How are you doing?” And you say, “Fine.” I mean, you might have lost an arm, a leg, and be bleeding profusely, but you tend to say, “Fine.” So, it’s important not to have that happen.