Optimizing Generalized Myasthenia Gravis Care Through Patient-Centered Choices

Announcer:
You’re listening to Neurofrontiers on ReachMD. On this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Sheetal Shroff, who’s a neurologist in the Houston Methodist Stanley H. Appel Department of Neurology in Texas. She discussed strategies for choosing the right treatments in generalized myasthenia gravis at the AANEM 2025 Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Here's Dr. Shroff now.

Dr. Shroff:
To start off, it's an exciting time for myasthenia gravis patients, because there are a lot of treatment options that are available now which we can use to treat. Now, defining treatment success is a bit challenging. In an ideal world, we want to have minimal symptom expression, where patients are minimally symptomatic with the least amount of treatment that we can use. With all these options available, it can be challenging.

So the way we do it in our practice is to basically present all the FDA-approved treatment options to the patients and make that shared decision together. What is a better fit? Which treatment better fits a patient with myasthenia gravis who sees us in the clinic?

Patients with myasthenia gravis compensate or get used to some of the symptoms, they do think that it is normal for them, and they consider that as doing well or stable. So some of the questionnaires that we typically use in our practice—the MG-ADL or the Quality of Life questionnaire—kind of give us a little bit more detail as to what really is happening in their day-to-day activities. Are they able to do their hobbies easily? Or are they able to participate or go out to lunch with their friends or family? So it just gives us a little bit more idea as to what is happening in their daily routine other than just the symptom of myasthenia itself. 

Now, on the other hand, when we do see some of the signs and symptoms like persistent weakness or there is fatigability when we examine these patients—whether it's in the neck muscles or arm muscles or leg muscles—despite patients saying that they're doing well, we do have to discuss with them that there are other treatment options available, and we can get more aggressive on treatment to see if they can get a better improvement in their symptoms. 

Announcer:
That was Dr. Sheetal Shroff sharing how to make treatment decisions for patients with generalized myasthenia gravis. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit Neurofrontiers on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!