OBJECTIVES: Myelofibrosis (MF) is a rare type of bone marrow cancer that causes extensive scarring in the bone marrow, leading to severe anemia. This study explored the MF patient population, those who develop anemia and those who undergo blood transfusions and the impact on treatment selection and survival rates leveraging ICON’s Symphony Health Integrated Dataverse (IDV) patient longitudinal data.

METHODS: Four patient cohorts were created from the patient having MF diagnosis claim between November 2018 to November 2023 (36,890 patient) using IDV. Of the 24,926 MF patients were diagnosed with anemia after the initial MF diagnosis. Anemia diagnosis codes and blood transfusion CPT codes were further explored for the patients identified having MF. Patient demographics, time to anemia diagnosis, number of transfusions and survival rates were explored for the four non- mutually exclusive cohorts.

1. Patients with Transfusion Following MF Diagnosis (18%)
2. Patients with Transfusion Following Anemia Diagnosis (18%)
3. Patients with No Transfusion Following MF Diagnosis (46%)
4. Patients with No Transfusion Following Anemia Diagnosis (47%)

RESULTS: Among identified MF patients, a difference was identified in how patients are treated for those that receive one or more blood transfusion. They are more likely to be “treated” with allogenic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and hydroxyurea is less likely to be used for treatment selection. Patients that do not receive transfusions have a slightly higher survival rate than patients that do receive transfusions. Cohorts 3 (92%) and 4 (92%) had a higher survival rate than Cohorts 1 (82%) and 2 (85%) when looking in the same calendar year as the diagnosis.

CONCLUSIONS: These real-world data illustrate the impact of anemia and transfusions on patient treatments and outcomes and requires further exploration of treatment selection and survival rates further out after initial diagnosis.