Chemotherapy Compared with Autologous or Allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplantation in the Management of Acute Myeloid Leukemia in First Remission

The rate of complete remission for adults with acute myeloid leukemia is approximately 65 percent overall and decreases with increasing age and the presence of unfavorable cytogenetic abnormalities. 1 , 2 With postremission therapy, disease-free survival at five years ranges from 10 to 15 percent with low-dose maintenance therapy 2 , 3 to 25 to 35 percent with intensive courses of chemotherapy, usually incorporating high-dose cytarabine. 4 – 6 In young patients, further escalation of postremission therapy is feasible, provided autologous or allogeneic hematopoietic stem cells can be transplanted to repopulate the ablated bone marrow. Despite the complications of graft-versus-host disease, a number of studies suggest . . .