Clinical Profile and Short Term Outcome of Adult Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Acute myeloid leukemia has a poor outcome because of early deaths, high relapse rate and financial constraints. Our hospital provides care free of cost and this study assesses the short term outcome of acute myeloid leukemia in adults. The study was done from September 2013 to May 2015. All patients above 18 years of age were included. Cytarabine infusion 100 mg/m² daily for 7 days and Daunorubicin 60 mg/m² daily for 3 days was used for induction chemotherapy followed by three cycles of high dose cytarabine as post-remission therapy. One hundred and two patients were included in the study. 48% were males. The median age was 41 years. There was an intention to treat in 84 patients. 13 patients died before chemotherapy and 71 patients (57 non AML M3) received induction chemotherapy. 82% of them had a Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance score of ≤ 2. 28 (of 57 non AML M3) patients were alive after post-remission therapy (with 39% deaths during induction phase) and 15 of them were in remission after a median follow up of nine months. The overall event free survival at the end of the study was 22% (16 out of 71). Altogether, 63 out of 84 patients had died. Sepsis was considered as the cause of death in 46% of the patients, but the isolation of causative organism was limited (20%). The treatment outcomes of AML are poor at our centre and the current standard of care needs a significant improvement.