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Abstract
The survival gap between adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with hematological malignancies persists in many countries. To determine to what extent it does in Japan, we investigated survival and treatment regimens in 211 Japanese AYAs (15–29 years) in the Osaka Cancer Registry diagnosed during 2001–2005 with hematological malignancies, and compared adolescents (15–19 years) with young adults (20–29 years). AYAs with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) had a poor 5-year survival (44%), particularly young adults (29% vs. 64% in adolescents, p = 0.01). Additional investigation for patients with ALL revealed that only 19% of young adults were treated with pediatric treatment regimens compared with 45% of adolescents (p = 0.05). Our data indicate that we need to focus on young adults with ALL and to consider establishing appropriate cancer care system and guidelines for them in Japan.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Drs Yoshihiko Sakurai, Akira Oshima, Keisei Kawa and Archie Bleyer for valuable comments. We also thank the doctors in the 33 designated cancer care hospitals in Osaka for joining in this study, and all the pediatric oncologists, adult hematologists, and medical staff who cooperate with the Osaka Cancer Registry. We thank Dr Julia Mortimer for helping us with the English language. This study was supported in part by a grant from the Osaka Cancer Society in 2013.
Potential conflict of interest
Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/10428194.2015.1083562.