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iwMPN 2026 | Using symptom assessment tools to improve MPN care
Ruben Mesa, MD, Levine Cancer Institute, Winston-Salem, NC, discusses how community hematologists can incorporate symptom and quality-of-life assessments into routine care for patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs). He highlights the use of the 10-question MPN Symptom Assessment Form (MPN-SAF) to track changes over time, support clinical conversations, and complement blood counts and physical examinations when evaluating disease burden. This interview took place at the 4th International Workshop on Myelodysplastic Syndromes & Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (iwMDS/iwMPN) 2026, held in Washington, D.C.
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Transcript
So the MPN Symptom Assessment Form is publicly available. It’s 10 questions. Patients can clearly fill it out in the waiting room and really not take away from time during the clinic visit. You know, I find that these tools that started in clinical trials really are very viable for clinical practice. Indeed, you know, in our practice, we really send it ahead of time. It gets into the electronic medical record...
So the MPN Symptom Assessment Form is publicly available. It’s 10 questions. Patients can clearly fill it out in the waiting room and really not take away from time during the clinic visit. You know, I find that these tools that started in clinical trials really are very viable for clinical practice. Indeed, you know, in our practice, we really send it ahead of time. It gets into the electronic medical record. And you can see our patients are the same, better or worse. And in many ways, that starts my conversation with them. I see you’re feeling better. Tell me about that. You know, I see that symptoms have worsened. Describe what experience that’s like. So that is one way really as a structured review of systems that you are able to both quantify changes but also really have insight into how the patient is feeling. The symptoms are not random. They’re not separate. They’re really a biomarker of the disease. Yes, they are subjective in the eyes of the patient, but still they are very, very real and reproducible. You know, our efforts related to symptoms have shown tremendous consistency globally in terms of the ranking of symptoms and their association with the disease. And indeed, the measurement of symptoms has probably been one of the most validated set of endpoints we’ve really had in managing these patients. So I heavily encourage folks to really build it into their workflow in such a way that it’s both efficient, you already have the data, you sit down with the patient, it’s just like the blood counts. I have their blood counts. I have their symptom scores. I do my physical exam to assess their spleen. So that is my objective set of data to guide my conversation with the patients.
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