IMS 2026 | Barriers to early diagnosis of multiple myeloma in primary care

You know, multiple myeloma is one of the cancers, if not, sadly, the cancer with the highest rate of diagnostic delay. You know, the average myeloma patient sees their primary care provider three times with signs and symptoms consistent with myeloma before the diagnosis is made. This is actually even longer in the U.S., in particular in individuals who are African-American and Latino-American. So people who have less access to healthcare in general or may have historical trust challenges with the healthcare system, that delay can even be longer. So we wanted to survey primary care providers to see when they think of multiple myeloma and when they do, what they order in terms of the testing? And sadly, our survey showed that there was a really significant gap within the primary care world to identify the early signs and symptoms of myeloma and then specifically what testing to order, to not just order a serum protein electrophoresis, but the need to also order a free light chain test. So I think it’s set a tone for us that there are multiple reasons why the diagnosis is delayed, the vagueness of the symptoms, but there is something we can do at the primary care level, educating our primary care colleagues, facilitating the testing that they do, so that we can hasten that diagnosis. Because we know when we ultimately think of the great inequities we see in myeloma, much of it has to do with access to therapies. We talk a lot about access to therapies, but a lot of it also has to do with that delayed diagnosis. And I think if we could make improvements in delayed diagnosis and catching the disease earlier, we will give our patients a much better opportunity to live better and longer with the disease.

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