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MPN 2021 | Are hematologists rational?

Robert Gale, MD, PhD, Imperial College London, London, UK, gives an overview of the key points from his talk at the 2021 International Congress on myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) titled ‘Are hematologists rational?’. Medical reversals occur when standard clinical practices are found to either have no benefit or cause harm to patients long after their implementation. A review of 45 practice-changing articles revealed that the benefit of over half of interventions could not be verified. Another meta-research examined 300 clinical interventions and reported that half did not bring any benefit to the patient and a third were harmful. For instance, over ten thousand women with breast cancer were treated with high-dose chemotherapy followed by bone marrow transplantation or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation with no control group to evaluate the efficacy of this approach. It later turned out this practice was not beneficial and was in fact harmful to these patients. This interview took place at the 2021 International Congress on MPNs congress in New York, NY.