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GCLLSG 2016 | How clinicans should talk to CLL patients about their hopes and expectations

Arnon Kater, MD, PhD of the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands talks about how he thinks clinicians should talk to chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients about their hopes and expectations at the 2016 International Workshop of the German CLL Study Group (GCLLSG) in Cologne, Germany. He explains that clinicians should not talk about cures to patients. Furthermore, patients should know that CLL is becoming more and more a chronic disease. Further, it is extremely important for quality of life assessments to be done for all the new clinical studies; even though the side effects are often small, having these side effects for a number of years can be disabling. He says although new treatments have been encouraging, clinicians must be careful not to be too optimistic to their patients.