Secondary Prophylaxis in a Cohort of Adolescent and Adult Italian Hemophiliacs.

Although primary prophylaxis is a well-established and widely recommended practice for the management of patients with severe hemophilia, there are limited data in the literature documenting the benefit of secondary prophylaxis initiated in adolescence or adulthood. In order to address this issue we have conducted a retrospective study among the 10 Italian Hemophilia Centers on adolescent and adult patients with severe hemophilia switched from on-demand treatment to a long term secondary prophylaxis regimen. On the whole, we collected information on 73 consecutive patients with severe hemophilia (66 hemophilia A and 7 hemophilia B). Their median age started prophylaxis was 12 (range 10–17) for 23 adolescents and 30 (17.4–72) for the 50 adults and continued for a median of years 5.8 (2–14.7) in adolescents and 4 years (1.5–12) in adults. The clinical impact of secondary prophylaxis with respect to the last year on-demand regimen before switching is showed in the following table for each group of patients.

The decreased joint bleeding, better orthopaedic score, less work/school days lost, delayed progression of arthropathy and improved well-being observed with secondary prophylaxis show the benefit of this therapeutic approach and appear to counterbalance its higher clotting factor consumption. In conclusion large, prospective, long-term randomized studies are needed to definitevely assess the clinical impact of this strategy in adolescent and adult hemophiliacs and to identify those groups of patients who would benefit from this therapeutic approach.