A new study offers a clearer picture as to why patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who received ibrutinib (Imbruvica, Pharmacyclics/Janssen) as a front-line treatment had a 7% death rate.
An earlier study showed that ibrutinib had a death rate of 7% compared with 1% for chemotherapy during treatment or within 30 days afterward (N Engl J Med 2018 Dec 27 [Epub ahead of print]).