Improved Treatment Outcome in Children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemiausing ALL-BFM 90 Study Protocol in the Czech Republic

Overview

Background.
Prognosis of children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) – the most common cancer inchildhood, has improved remarkably over the last 40 years. The authors report the treatment outcome in childrenwith ALL cured according to ALL-BFM 90 Study protocol in the Czech Republic during the first half of nineties.Methods and Results. Children aged 0–18 years were included into the study in 10 centers between 1990 to 1996.Patients were classified into standard-risk (SR), medium-risk (MR) and high-risk (HR) group according to initialleukaemic burden, early treatment response, and genotype of leukaemia. Duration of the chemotherapy was twoyears. Treatment results were evaluated in 352 children. With a median follow-up of 7.3 years, event-free-survival(EFS) was 71.3 % and overall survival 76.4 %. EFS was 80.3 %, 74 % and 28.2 % in SR, MR and HR group,respectively. Relapse was diagnosed in 17.8 % of the patients.Conclusions. The treatment outcome of children with ALL improved significantly (p=0.0045) compared to theprevious study ALL-BFM 83 (EFS 62 %). These results are comparable to those achieved by leading leukaemiastudy groups in the world.

Key words:
acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, chemotherapy, protocol ALL-BFM 90, relapse.