Community Practice Connections™: Understanding Cold Agglutinin Disease: How Do Emerging Treatment Options Have the Potential to Transform Patient Outcomes?

Target Audience
This educational activity is directed toward medical hematologists and other health care professionals interested in the latest advances in the treatment of patients with CAD. Fellows, researchers, primary care physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other health care professionals interested in the treatment of patients with hematologic diseases are also invited to participate.

Activity Overview
Cold agglutinin disease (CAD) is a serious condition with unpredictable anemia events ranging in occurrence and severity, and which can be debilitating and potentially life-threatening. More than half of the affected patients may require transfusions, and a large majority need treatment; but options are limited, and none are specifically approved for CAD. However, novel complement-directed therapies are currently in development, which hold promise for this autoimmune hemolytic anemia.

This Community Practice Connections™ program provides an in-depth review of some of the key highlights from the live virtual symposium held on December 4, 2020. This unique and engaging multimedia activity is ideal for the community-based clinician and focuses on the practical aspects of managing patients with CAD, while placing recent clinical trial data into a clinical context. The program is designed for those who did not attend the live meeting and would help to reinforce learnings for those who did.

Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this activity, you should be better prepared to:

Discuss the impact of cold agglutinin disease (CAD) on patients
Explain the role of the complement system, which leads to the recognition of CAD as a distinct clinical entity
Identify typical and atypical clinical manifestations of CAD and apply effective disease-specific assessments
Describe the role of complement-mediated therapies based on current efficacy and safety data of new and emerging agents for the treatment of patients with CAD