Acute myeloid leukemia treatment in patients over 60 years of age. Comparison of symptomatic, palliative, and aggressive therapy.

State-of-art of aggressive treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in patients older than 60 years is one of the least satisfactory topics of present-day hematology. This fact led us to ask the following questions: Does it make sense to administer aggressive treatment to older patients with AML? Could it be that we only complicate the rest of the life of these older patients with AML, by using aggressive treatment? Would they not benefit more from palliative or symptomatic therapy? What is the quality of life of older patients with AML like? Therefore, to try to answer these questions, we performed the next analysis. A retrospective analysis was performed including (without any selection) all consecutive patients over 60 years of age who were treated with AML in our centre from 1998 till 2003. We have analyzed data from 137 elderly patients who were diagnosed with AML (excluding acute promyelocytic leukemia). Median survival from diagnosis in the aggressive (curative) therapy group was 4 months, in palliative therapy group 2 months and in symptomatic therapy group 0.8 months. Patients receiving curative therapy spent in a hospital (in-patient stay) 70% (median) of their life after diagnosis of AML, patients receiving palliative treatment 64% (median) of their life after diagnosis, and patients receiving symptomatic treatment 100% (median), respectively. Only marginal advantage in the median overall survival is observed in the group of aggressively treated patients.