Impact of lecture on knowledge of IM residents in diagnosing and managing CRS and ICANS.

Abstract

e23313 Background: Cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS) will become more prevalent in the outpatient setting as immunomodulatory drugs like chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (CAR-T) and Bi-specific antibody therapy become more ubiquitous. Because of this, there is a vast need for internal medicine (IM) physicians to be aware of this. Methods: Our project entailed educational lectures for IM physicians at multiple hospitals throughout the state of Michigan in a community and academic setting. Thirty-five participants completed paired pre- and post-intervention surveys after a 1-hour educational lecture. These responses were then analyzed using a paired T-test analysis. Results: Our survey demonstrated an increase from 83% to 97% in knowledge of diagnosing CRS/ICANS and a corresponding increase from 73% to 97% in knowledge about selecting the correct treatment for CRS/ICANS. A composite toxicity confidence score (average of CRS and ICANS ratings) increased from 1.67 pre-intervention to 3.50 post-intervention, corresponding to a mean improvement of 1.83 points. Improvement was observed in nearly all participants, demonstrating a large and highly consistent effect of the educational intervention. Individually, both CRS and ICANS domains showed highly statistically significant improvements (both p < 10⁻⁹). Conclusions: Our project shows that lecture-based education on this topic in the era of emerging immune-based therapy shows robust improvement in recognition and treatment of CRS and ICANS. This can be modeled and upscaled for distribution to other disciplines, states, and institutions throughout the United States already utilizing CAR-T and bispecific antibodies.