Objective: To analyse the clinical features and survival of patients with refractory/relapsed acute myeloid
leukemia (AML) in our center, thus, to find out whether there is a trend of improvement in the survival of
these patients in the past years and to search for prognostic factors which are associated with patients’
survival.
Method: A total of 45 patients with refractory/relapsed AML were retrospectively reviewed. Clinical data,
including gender, age, FAB classification of AML, performance status (PS), cytogenetic and molecular
abnormities, complete remission (CR) duration, choices of treatment (whether to undergo hematopoietic
stem cell transplantation) before and after relapse. The Kaplan-Meier method and the Log-rank test were
conducted to determine the influence of those above factors on the patients’ survival.
Results: The mean survival time of the 45 patients with refractory/relapsed AML was (36.25±8.40) months
and the median follow up was (9±2.58) months. The one-year and two-years overall survival (OS) rate was
(40.6±7.5) % and (23.7±7.0) %, respectively. Univariate analysis results demonstrated that age (p<0.05)
and undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) after relapse (p<0.01) were significantly
related to OS in these patients.
Conclusion: Age and whether to undergo HSCT after relapse are the key factors for the survival of patients
with refractory/relapsed AML in our center. HSCT is still an effective salvage therapy for patients with
refractory/relapsed AML. Our findings highlight the divergent outcomes of these patients and provide
evidence to support the importance of timely HSCT after relapse, which is beneficial for clinicians to make
clinical decisions in the future.
MRD abnormal expression predict poor outcomes for refractory or relapsed acute myeloid leukemia after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation
