New Findings Highlight Key Role of Clinician Communication in Lymphoma, CLL Care: Lorna Warwick

In the second and final part of an interview with Lorna Warwick, CEO of the Lymphoma Coalition, at the European Hematology Association (EHA) 2025 Congress earlier this month, she expands on the findings of the abstract she coauthored, “The Effect of Unaddressed Side Effects on Patient-Reported Confidence in Care Plans Among Patients With Lymphoma or Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL).”

Warwick concludes by recommending ways clinicians can improve communication and better support patients managing adverse effects.

Watch part 1 to learn about the average adverse effect profiles reported by patients with CLL, along with a summary of the abstract's background and key findings, as presented on June 13 at the EHA 2025 Congress.

This transcript was lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

Could you elaborate on the key findings of your abstract? Were there any that particularly surprised you?

When we looked at the findings, overall, I don't think that I personally was surprised by what [rose] to the surface because there are specific issues with some of those side effects that are near the top. Graft-vs-host disease is a very complicated condition and is even more complicated because patients are often seeing other doctors. When those issues arise, they're not necessarily traced back to being graft-vs-host disease right away. A patient can have a very complicated path to find out [that] it is graft-vs-host disease, and they should have gone back to their stem cell transplant doctor or that clinic.

Better ways to help patients navigate through that experience are definitely needed, and it is something that we've had discussions [about] with organizations like Eurograft. We know that there are attempts to try and close some of those gaps in [the] clinic that the clinicians should be paying attention to so that we can improve that care.

Fatigue, like I [said], we talk about it all the time, it's not surprising that it's up there. I think clinicians have more work to do. There are clinical practice guidelines for fatigue that they could follow. If they are following them, then [they should] let their patients know that they're following them just to make sure that we're closing that loop on that communication. Not only that, but when they are introducing any kind of intervention to help a patient cope with any of these side effects, at the next visit, that they're checking with their patient. Did this work? If it didn't work, what else can we try?

I would say, again, for some of these, we know that doctors won't be able to resolve all of these issues. Communication is important, but perhaps also some external resources. So, thinking about, where else can you send patients to get them some support? Patient organizations have some extra resources on things like fatigue. Perhaps, if that's a good resource, as a physiotherapist, who else can help a patient cope with these issues that are rising to the surface?

What practical steps can clinicians take to apply these insights in everyday practice when supporting patients experiencing adverse effects?

I would say to clinicians to just, really, when a patient is voicing something to you, if they're taking the time to actually vocalize that this is bothering me, that this is having an impact, It's probably having a really big impact, especially if it's not something that that you are regularly dialoguing about with them. If they are taking, really, that impetus to raise an issue to the surface, it's important to them.

Treat it as such, ask some better questions to find out how [it] is impacting [them]. Use a scale. How much do you think this is impacting your quality of life from [a scale of] 0 to 5? So you really understand what that impact is on the patient.

Like I said, sometimes you won't be able to solve it, but just giving it the credence that the patient is bringing to you and realizing that this is an important issue to them, so if we can't medically solve it, what else can we do to help the patient cope? Who can we refer them to? But [we need to] find some avenues to make sure that the patient is getting support.