Self-reported health and survival in older patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

Abstract

6582 Background: The strength of associations between pre-diagnosis self-reported health (SRH) and mortality differ by medical condition, with a moderately strong association reported among cancer patients. Less is known about the impact of SRH on survival among patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma (MM). We aimed to evaluate pre-diagnosis SRH in relation to survival in a cohort of older MM patients. Methods: We analyzed a prospective cohort from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (MHOS) database of patients 65 years and older diagnosed with first primary MM. Survey responses to a single general health question (asking patients to self-report their health as excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor) were used to determine pre-diagnosis SRH, grouped as high (excellent/very good/good) or low (fair/poor). We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards models to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for associations between SRH and risks of all-cause and cancer-specific mortality. Results: Of 521 MM patients with pre-diagnosis SRH data, the mean (SD) age at diagnosis was 76.8 (6.1) years with 60% of patients identifying as white, 18% as black, and 32% reporting low SRH. Compared to patients reporting high SRH, patients reporting low SRH were older, had lower education levels, more comorbidities, and lower Veterans-RAND 12 physical health and mental health component summary scores. In multivariable analyses, MM patients with low SRH had a 28% increased risk of all-cause mortality (HR = 1.28, 95% CI = 1.00, 1.64) and a non-statistically significant 19% increased risk of cancer-specific mortality (HR = 1.19, 95% CI = 0.87, 1.61) compared to MM patients reporting high SRH. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that lower SRH is highly prevalent among MM patients prior to diagnosis and is associated with modestly increased all-cause mortality. At a minimum, low SRH deserves clinical attention to determine how older MM patients’ quality of life may be compromised. The mechanism by which SRH affects mortality in MM should be further assessed and efforts should be made to identify whether any of the underlying mechanisms linking SRH and mortality in MM are mutable.