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Hammersmith Results

Hi,

Not sure if anybody can help with this question? At the CML patient day in Oxford this week Professor Jane Apperley briefly mentioned 'conversion rates' for PCR results received from the Hammersmith. If I understood correctly she was saying you have to apply this conversion rate to calculate your PCR on the International Scale. (Although I may have got this wrong)
My 3 month results from the Hammersmith were higher than I had hoped and it caused me quite a lot of worry at the time. I am on Spirit 2, and my question is; how do I know if the results I received already had the conversion factor applied? My local hospital still report PCR as a log reduction and could not answer my questions on the this subject.

Many thanks in advance if anyone can help.

Sarah

Hi Sarah, you are right.

I think Prof. Apperley mentioned that a result from Hammersmith is not reported on the IS, so you need to apply a conversion rate which for HH is 0.3(?).... I hope my memory is correct.

I am terrible at maths but I think what she was trying to say was a high figure from a PCR done at HH when the conversion factor was applied would translate to a lower one on the IS.

She gave the example of a PCR result of 30% BCR/ABL from the HH lab, multiplied by 0.3 - the HH lab conversion factor- would give a PCR result of 0.09% (IS)

I hope this helps.... so sorry we didn't get a chance to say hello!

Sandy

Hi Sandy,
Thanks for the response, I wasn't sure if I had misunderstood.
So if that is the case, my 30% results at 3 months may have actually been 9% and I was worrying about nothing! :)
Sarah

Hi Sarah... you are inline with an optimal response so you are doing well and within the less than 3 month ELNet recommendation..... i.e less that <10% BCR-ABL or less than <35% PH+ by cytogenetics.

My figure of 0.09 looked really promising... but I had pressed the % button on my calculator!

9% is a much more realistic figure.

Sandy