B) Consolidation treatment:
Consolidation therapy is highly controversial, and if you are younger than 60 years old, your doctor might talk to you about bone marrow transplantation as a better option. However, multiple studies have shown that good initial response in the induction period can spare the patient a bone marrow transplantation by using cytarabine as a chemotherapy in high doses. The idea of avoiding bone marrow transplantation is that it always carries the risk of rejection, infections or even a slight risk of life-threatening complications. The availability of a compatible donor is also important, but recent studies show an opportunity by using autologous bone marrow transplantation.
The idea of autologous transplantation is that we can use the cells of the same patient after successful chemotherapy as a graft after ablating their bone marrow by chemotherapy or radiation. The choice of bone marrow transplantation vs chemotherapy is, however, not that simple and many factors play a role, most importantly the genetic component of the cancer.