Prognosis of patients with AML
Acute myeloid leukemia is a curable disease. However, the prognosis of acute myeloid leukemia depends on a number of factors such as age, the general state of health, and the specific disease subtype. Depending on these factors, the probability of recovery of each patient changes.
To determine the prognosis of each patient, a number of prognostic factors are taken into account and evaluated against various treatment options.
Patient cytogenetics is one of the most important factors that are evaluated to obtain a reliable prognosis of the disease since there are certain chromosomal abnormalities closely related to specific subtypes of leukemia.
However, about half of patients with acute myeloid leukemia have normal cytogenetic profiles. These patients are considered to be in the intermediate-risk group. On the other hand, there are very specific cytogenetic abnormalities that are associated with an adverse prognosis, since they present the highest risk of relapse after treatment.
Cases of AML that have arisen from a preexisting myelodysplastic or myeloproliferative syndrome have a worse prognosis. The same applies to cases of AML associated with chemotherapeutic cancer treatments.
The patient’s physical condition and activity level also play a substantial role in the prognosis of AML. For example, patients that are older than 60 years of age and that possess high levels of lactate dehydrogenase have a significantly worse prognosis than younger patients.
Survival rates in most clinical trials hover somewhere between 20% and 50%. However, it is important to note that most clinical trials studying patients with AML focus on a younger demographic, who is much better suited to tolerate aggressive types of therapy. Therefore, it is very likely that the overall survival rate for all patients with AML, including the elderly and patients who are unable to tolerate aggressive types of therapy, is much lower.