Cambridge Members’ Conference March 2019

8 March 2019

The meeting was opened with a welcome and brief introduction. The first presentation was in three parts about the psychological impact of a CLL diagnosis (uncertainty and changed priorities), understanding our reactions and what we can do to help ourselves.

This was followed by a patient’s story given by Jackie who talked about her diagnosis and treatment under the Flair trial.

The afternoon was started with an update of the work of the CLLSA by Marc on Champions

and Brian on Buddy Scheme and other activities

This was followed by group discussion on how CLL had affected us personally with regards to psychological issues and what we felt was needed to support us. This will inform some of the work of the CLLSA Board in the future.

The main presentation ‘Where are we now and where are we heading?’ was given by Dr George Follows. Dr Follows is a consultant haematologist and clinical lead for Lymphoma and CLL at Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

He gave an overview of CLL, talked about treatments including the new combinations of therapies and showed some results of trials that were presented at the American Society for Haematology (ASH) in December 2018. It was an excellent presentation and lots of questions followed from the floor.

Many thanks to the CLLSA Trustees whose hard work enables these events to take place. Many thanks to Leukaemia Care for attending the meeting with their information.