were collected. According to Kumar et al^[@R8]^, improved survival in recent years is mostly coupled with the increased use of novel agents, including thalidomide, lenalidomide, and bortezomib, as part of initial therapy. In our study, the patients were grouped into 2 diagnosis-year strata: a group from 2002 to 2008 and 2009 to 2015. The cutoff value was chosen because payment of bortezomib has been reimbursed since 2009 in Taiwan for treating myeloma patients. Our primary endpoint was early mortality, defined as death within 60 days after diagnosis.^[@R10]^ Retrospective review of medical records was conducted in accordance with an institutional ethics committee in agreement with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, revised in 2008. This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board at Taipei Veterans General Hospital (no.Veterans General Hospital (V104B-023), the Taiwan Clinical Oncology Research Foundation, the Szu-Yuan Research Foundation of Internal Medicine, and the Chong Hin Loon Memorial Cancer and Biotherapy Research Center, National Yang-Ming University.

The funding sources had no role in the study design or conduct, or in the decision to submit it for publication

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
