OBJECTIVES:

Asciminib demonstrated lower (superior) overall health care resource utilization (HCRU) at Week 24 than bosutinib. This study compares the Week 48 and Week 96 HCRU among 3L+ patients with chronic myeloid leukemia in chronic phase (CML-CP) in the ASCEMBL clinical trial.

METHODS:

The number of patients with HCRU, rate of HCRU per patient-year, and length of hospital stay by ward type were compared between 156 patients receiving asciminib 40 mg twice daily and 76 patients receiving bosutinib 500 mg once daily.

RESULTS:

Median treatment duration (in weeks) among patients receiving asciminib versus bosutinib was 66.8 versus 32.6 at Week 48, and 103.1 versus 34.4 at Week 96. Despite longer median treatment duration, lower proportions of patients receiving asciminib versus bosutinib used any resources including hospitalizations, emergency room visits (<24 hours), general practitioner visits, specialist visits, and urgent care visits (25.6% versus 39.5% at Week 48, and 28.8% versus 42.6% at Week 96). After normalizing for treatment exposure, rates of HCRU per patient-year were significantly lower for asciminib versus bosutinib: 0.20 versus 0.48 at Week 48, and 0.17 versus 0.40 at Week 96 for any resource. Hospitalization was the most common resource used for asciminib and bosutinib (respective annual rate 0.11 and 0.26 at Week 48, and 0.10 and 0.24 at Week 96). Generally, mean length of hospital stay was lower for asciminib than bosutinib across all wards. Most hospitalizations had time spent in general ward for both asciminib (mean duration of 9.1 days at Week 48 and 8.7 days at Week 96) and bosutinib (mean duration of 10.4 days at Week 48 and 9.7 days at Week 96), followed by ‘other care unit’ for asciminib and emergency room for bosutinib.

CONCLUSIONS:

In the ASCEMBL trial, asciminib-treated patients with CML-CP maintained lower resource utilization over the long-term compared to bosutinib.