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© 2005 Oxford University Press
NEWS |
Consumer Groups Look To Improve Adverse Event Reporting Systems
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Few multiple myeloma patients, let alone anyone else, had heard of osteonecrosis in 2001. The rare affliction, in which bone marrow dies and bones collapse, is found most often in the hip. But starting in 2002, patients with multiple myeloma began turning up with bone deformities in their jaws.
Robert Kyle, M.D., a noted myeloma specialist at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., remarked that in his 40 years of practice, he had never seen osteonecrosis of the jaw. And yet, in 2003 and 2004, oral surgeons published reports of dozens of myeloma and other cancer patients with the potentially disfiguring disorder.
Michael Katz, of the International Myeloma Foundation, a patient advocacy organization, said online discussion groups soon made a link: the jaw problems appeared only
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