Acute Myeloid Leukemia in Adolescents and Young Adults Treated in Pediatric and Adult Departments in the Nordic Countries

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked Files. This article is open access.BackgroundStudies on adolescents and young adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia suggest better results when using pediatric protocols for adult patients, while corresponding data for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) are limited. ProcedureWe investigated disease characteristics and outcome for de novo AML patients 10-30 years old treated in pediatric or adult departments. We included 166 patients 10-18 years of age with AML treated according to the pediatric NOPHO-protocols (1993-2009) compared with 253 patients aged 15-30 years treated in hematology departments (1996-2009) in the Nordic countries. ResultsThe incidence of AML was 4.9/million/year for the age group 10-14 years, 6.5 for 15-18 years, and 6.9 for 19-30 years. Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) was more frequent in adults and in females of all ages. Pediatric patients with APL had similar overall survival as pediatric patients without APL. Overall survival at 5 years was 60% (52-68%) for pediatric patients compared to 65% (58-70%) for adult patients. Cytogenetics and presenting white blood cell count were the only independent prognostic factors for overall survival. Age was not an independent prognostic factor. ConclusionsNo difference was found in outcome for AML patients age 10-30 years treated according to pediatric as compared to adult protocols[ 1 ] Sahlgrens Univ Hosp, Dept Hematol & Coagulat, Dept Internal Med, Gothenburg, Sweden [ 2 ] Aarhus Univ Hosp, Dept Pediat, DK-8200 Aarhus, Denmark [ 3 ] Queen Silvia Childrens Hosp, Dept Pediat, Gothenburg, Sweden [ 4 ] Aarhus Univ Hosp, Dept Hematol, DK-8200 Aarhus, Denmark [ 5 ] Univ Hosp, Dept Hematol, Rikshosp, Oslo, Norway [ 6 ] Umea Univ Hosp, Dept Med Biosci, S-90185 Umea, Sweden [ 7 ] Karolinska Hosp, Children Canc Res Unit, S-10401 Stockholm, Sweden [ 8 ] Univ Lund Hosp, Dept Pediat, S-22185 Lund, Sweden [ 9 ] Univ Helsinki, Dept Pediat, Helsinki, Finland [ 10 ] Landspitalinn, Dept Pediat, Reykjavik, Iceland [ 11 ] Univ Copenhagen, Rigshosp, Dept Pediat & Adolescent Med, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark [ 12 ] Uppsala Univ, Dept Pediat, Uppsala, Sweden [ 13 ] Univ Hosp, Dept Pediat, Rigshosp, Oslo, Norway [ 14 ] Univ Gothenburg, Sahlgrenska Acad, Inst Clin Sci, Dept Oncol, Gothenburg, Sweden [ 15 ] Lund Univ, Dept Hematol, Skane Univ Hosp, Lund, Swede