Disappointments in Treating Acute Leukemia in the Elderly

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Abstract
The treatment of acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) is often portrayed as one of the successes of modern hematology. In 1966, the year before I qualified as a doctor, the median survival of adults with acute leukemia was 40 days.1 Only 10 percent had remission of their disease. Nowadays, it is commonplace to hear of remission rates of 80 percent and to talk about cure. Such optimism is misleading. There is a subgroup of young adults, particularly those with favorable chromosomal translocations, in whom the outlook is much less bleak than it was. But most cases of AML occur in patients . . .