The Second Revision of the International Staging System (R2-ISS) was recently introduced to improve risk stratification over that provided by the extensively applied standard revised International Staging System (R-ISS). In addition to the variables included in the R-ISS, the R2-ISS incorporates chromosome 1q gain/amplification and divides the patients into 4 groups with different survival outcomes, better stratifying patients within the R-ISS intermediate-risk. The new model was developed based on a great quantity of data from patients participating in uniform clinical trials and has not been validated in real-world clinical practice. Therefore, we retrospectively analyzed the prognostic value of the R2-ISS in 474 consecutive patients with multiple myeloma receiving immunomodulatory drugs or proteasome inhibitor-based regimens as their first-line treatment. According to the R2-ISS, 41 (8.6%), 76 (16%), 275 (58%), and 82 (17.3%) patients were identified as R2-ISS I, R2-ISS II, R2-ISS III, and R2-ISS IV, respectively. The median progression-free survival (PFS) was 48 (95% CI: 38-58), 35 (95% CI: 23-47), 24 (95% CI: 21-27), and 12 (95% CI: 7-17) months, and the estimated median overall survival (OS) was 110 (95% CI: 42-178), 88 (95% CI: 75-101), 50 (95% CI: 43-57), and 26 (95% CI: 19-33) months (p < 0.001) in the 4 groups, respectively. The R2-ISS could also classify groups with distinct survival among patients with renal impairment or classified as R-ISS II. Adjusted by age, sex, treatment approaches and transplantation status, the R2-ISS was an independent prognostic factor associated with OS with a hazard ratio of 7.055 (95% CI: 3.626-13.726) (p < 0.001) for R2-ISS IV versus R2-ISS I and 2.707 (95% CI: 1.436-5.103) (p = 0.002) for R2-ISS III versus R2-ISS I. In conclusion, our results suggest that the R2-ISS is a simple and robust risk stratification tool for patients with multiple myeloma treated with novel drugs and could be used in everyday clinical practice.
Chen et al. (Mon,) studied this question.