Raisa Gorbacheva Memorial Lecture. Treatment of acute myeloid leukemia: Present status and new directions III

Since my 1st Raisa Gorbacheva Memorial Lecture 2 years ago things have changed in part whereas other things remain unchanged and appear more and more consistent. Unchanged are the data from the numerous international multicenter trials published since 1981 covering both younger and older patients. The extract from these trials shows an increase of the mean complete remission rates between the 1980s and thereafter from 66% to 72% in younger and from 42 to 51% in older patients. Similarly, the rate of continuous complete remissions has increased over time from 17 to 34% in younger and 11 to 15% in older patients. During this period of time we also learnt about the effects of different treatment options. Thus, in our 1978 pilot study we made the observation that patients receiving any type of post-remission chemotherapy achieved some long-term remission rate, whereas patients not receiving post-remission chemotherapy all relapsed: mostly within the 1st year (Fig.1)