For a small number of younger patients, an allogeneic – or donor – stem cell transplant may be considered. Download the Infosheet.
You may also be prescribed other treatment to help prevent or manage potential side effects of your treatment. You might also be given other treatment to help with the symptoms and complications of myeloma. Find out more.
How will you know if treatment is working?
Tests will be carried out on a regular basis to determine how you are responding to treatment. These will vary, but generally will include regular blood and/or urine tests, and occasional imaging tests or bone marrow investigations.
The signs that treatment is working include:
- A fall in the paraprotein or light chain level
- An improvement in symptoms and/or complications such as bone pain, anaemia and kidney function
- A reduction in the number of myeloma cells in the bone marrow
- An improvement in general health
What happens if treatment doesn’t work?
Not every patient responds well to the same treatment. Refractory myeloma is myeloma that has not responded to treatment.
There are, however, a number of different treatment options for myeloma. Many of the drugs used to treat myeloma work in different ways, so even if a patient does not respond well to one treatment combination this does not necessarily mean they won’t respond to a different combination. Find out about treatment for relapsed myeloma.