Treatment patterns, mortality, and health care utilization and costs in indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients with relapsed or refractory disease.

Abstract

e19557 Background: Indolent non-Hodgkin lymphomas (iNHL) have relapsing courses after initial therapy. For those who relapse, the response duration to subsequent lines of therapy shorten with time, eventually becoming refractory. Using a large national claims database, we sought to characterize the population of iNHL patients who relapse in terms of prevalence, outcomes and costs. Methods: We identified newly diagnosed iNHL (i.e., follicular lymphoma, small lymphocytic lymphoma, marginal zone lymphoma, lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma) patients from 2004-2013 from the Truven Health MarketScan Commercial and Medicare claims databases using ICD codes. We defined relapsed or refractory disease (R/R) as those patients relapsing/not responding within 6 months on any combination of alkylating agents (AA) and rituximab (R) as evidenced by having claims indicating a change in treatment. Patients were followed from the start of the new treatment (index date) until death or end of data. Reimbursements were adjusted to 20...