About Project CRAB

The CRAB project is designed to raise the awareness of primary care physicians of multiple myeloma, diagnostic options and novel approaches in the treatment of this disease, thus giving the patient the opportunity to receive timely and effective therapy.

The symptoms of multiple myeloma are initially most nonspecific, which is why patients with complaints will first contact general practitioners, neurologists, orthopedicians, and rehabilitation specialists. This explains why awareness of primary care physicians of possible presentations and symptoms of multiple myeloma is absolutely critical for the timely diagnosis of this disease. It is just these physicians who should consider, in the differential diagnosis process, also the possibility of multiple myeloma, perform special investigations and, if confirming the suspicion, refer the patient to a specialist, that is, to an outpatient unit of haematology.

Currently, the time from the onset of first symptoms and an appointment with the physician to the diagnosis of multiple myeloma may be as long as several months. At the same time, timely diagnosis of the disease will appreciably increase the success rate of therapy, prevent irreversible damage to the patient's body thus helping to extend and improve the quality of their life.

Taking the above into account, each physician should be familiar with the possible presentations and symptoms of the disease. Hence the acronym of the project – CRAB – referring to the initial letters of the main symptoms of multiple myeloma in English: C standing for increased calcium levels; R for renal insufficiency, A for anaemia, and B for bone alterations.

Upon project completion, the awareness of physicians of the disease, who are first contacted by patients, should be demonstrably improved. This will help shorten the interval between the initial symptoms and diagnosis with more patients identified already in the early stages of disease; timely initiation of effective therapy will improve the prognosis and quality of life of the patient while preventing the development of unnecessary complications.