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From the comprehensive MM registries of the Singapore (SG) and South Korea (SK) MM study groups, we study the survival data of 432 unselected and previously untreated MM patients diagnosed from 2006 to 2009. Although novel agents were introduced to both countries which have compatible healthcare standards at the same time, MM patients with high-risk features in SG could receive frontline bortezomib while bortezomib could only be approved for salvage setting in SK. After a median follow-up of 19 months, despite 26% of patients in SG versus none in SK having received frontline bortezomib, the overall bortezomib-exposure rate was higher in SK (60% versus 47%, p

Patients with primary hypereosinophilic disorders who are positive for the FIP1L1-PDGFRA fusion gene mutation are highly responsive to therapy with imatinib mesylate. A 35-year-old man with FIP1L1-PDGFRA positive hypereosinophilic syndrome and cardiac involvement, was treated with imatinib 100 mg daily. Hematologic and molecular remission and reversal of end-organ damage was achieved. He was then lost to follow up for 19 months. Imatinib successfully reinduced hematologic and molecular remission but worsening cardiac involvement was not reversed. Our experience and a review of limited literature suggest that imatinib maintenance therapy is necessary despite molecular remission of the FIP1L1-PDGFRA mutation.