DR COLE: Your thoughts on long-term presence of PICC lines versus putting a port in somebody who’s in remission and maybe out of the zone of danger? I have some people come back to me from MD Anderson with PICC lines that are dangling, and they’re now home in rural Oklahoma not really caring for their PICC lines, and I am very worried about that dynamic. And some people that I have talked to have said, “We just don’t like putting in ports, because it’s a surgical procedure. If they become infected, they have to go through a surgery to take it out.” What are your thoughts on lines?

DR CORTES: I don’t use ports. I hate ports for leukemia patients. When they’re working fine, they’re great. They’re very convenient for the patients, easy to take care of, et cetera. When they get infected, it’s a mess. I mean, you get patients that end up with big holes in their chest and whatever. It’s not all the time. It doesn’t happen all the time, but we see them enough that we hate ports.

The lines get infected. You can very easily, very quickly just cut the stitches and pull them out and forget about it. Now again, certainly, you have to look at the situation of the patient. And if they live on a farm where that line is going to be very exposed and they don’t have a very good way of taking care of it and whatever, perhaps the port is the least of 2 evils. But I certainly do not like ports in leukemia patients.

Module 1: Current and future approaches to targeted therapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML)

Module 2: Other clinical issues in AML management

Module 3: Case discussions