Clinical outcome of children with newly diagnosed acute lymphoblastic leukemia treated in a single center in Shanghai, China

Abstract

Aim of the study is to determine the clinical outcome of 158 cases of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treated with a risk-directed protocol in Shanghai, China. One hundred fifty eight consecutive newly diagnosed patients were enrolled in the ALL-XH-99 protocol. The Kaplan – Meier method was used to estimate survival rates and comparisons were made by using the 2-sided log-rank test. Of all the 158 patients evaluated, 153 (96.8%) achieved complete remission (CR) in a median time of 33 days. The 5-year event-free survival (EFS) rate was 66.9% ± 13.1%. Relapse occurred in 15 patients with isolated hematologic relapse in 13 and isolated central nervous system relapse in 2. Seven patients died of treatment-related complications. The medical cost for each patient does not exceed 25,000 USD. Contemporary risk-directed therapy can cure approximately two thirds of patients with ALL at relatively low cost. The challenge is to extend curative treatment to less privileged patients having fewer financial resources.

Keywords:

• Leukemia
• lymphoblastic
• acute
• childhood
• ALL-XH-99 protocol
• EFS