Types of response

How will I know if my treatment is working?

Once you have started treatment, you might notice some of the symptoms caused by myeloma start to reduce. This can be a sign that treatment is working. 

Your haematologist will monitor your response to treatment regularly, usually through blood and/or urine (wee) tests. They might also order scans or a bone marrow biopsy to check for a reduction in your bone lesions or plasma cells in your bone marrow.

You can read more about these tests on our Understanding your tests webpage.

Response criteria

When measuring your response to treatment, your Haematologist will use the International Myeloma Working Group’s Response Criteria to define the depth of your response according to:

• the number of plasma cells in your bone marrow
• the level of paraprotein in your blood or urine 
• the presence of bone disease. 

These different responses are summarised in the diagram below.

While it is very desirable and encouraging to see that no myeloma can be detected, it’s important to know that not everyone achieves a complete response from their treatment.

Many people can live with a certain level of myeloma in their blood and bone marrow, often for a long time, without it causing any problems. This is called a plateau period. 

Your haematologist will also be interested in the duration of response you have to a treatment, and will take this into account when recommending future treatment options.