Target Audience

DMU faculty, staff, students, residents, and the medical community.

Objectives

• Differentiate findings about the pathophysiology of Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (PPMS).
• Identify specific aspects of evaluation, including objective tests and measures that can help to pinpoint PPMS and quantify its progression.
• Evaluate data on pharmacologic treatments that may emerge with a role in treating patients with PPMS.

Assessment of Need and References

• Clinical Gap 1: Differentiating and Evaluating: It is important that clinicians are equipped to accurately differentiate and evaluate PPMS (as compared with RRMS or secondary progressive MS [SPMS]), which affects a smaller percentage of patients but is also potentially much more disabling.1 In addition, acquiring foundational knowledge regarding pathophysiology can help to frame mechanisms of action for potentially effective treatments.
• Clinical Gap 2: Developments in Treatment: Due to the lack of approved effective treatments for PPMS thus far, clinicians must be informed about emerging agents that may offer some modification of the disease course.

Clinicians managing patients with PPMS are challenged by several aspects of this responsibility. Assessment can be confounded by patient perceptions and variable presentations and course, so effective evaluation must consider objective data such as MRI and assessment scale findings as well as the individual patient’s presentation and history. Treatment options have been limited to date and there is a lack of consensus on approach to treatment, so it is important that clinicians are able to analyze new data/treatment options expected to emerge, as a means of informing the selection of the safest and most effective options for care. View the entire assessment of need analysis and references.