In the era of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), patients with chronic myeloid leukemia in chronic phase (CML-CP) who survived for a certain number of years maintained excellent clinical outcomes, a new study published online ahead of print in the journal Cancer has shown.1
Because TKIs, such as imatinib, dasatinib, and nilotinib, significantly improve survival in patients with CML-CP, researchers sought to estimate the probability of survival in patients who have already survived for 1 additional year after 12 months of TKI therapy.
For the study, researchers analyzed cumulative response and survival data from 483 patients with a median follow-up of 99.4 months included in six frontline TKI clinical trials and calculated the conditional probability for failure-free survival, transformation-free survival, event-free survival, and overall survival according to patients’ responses within 1 year of TKI therapy initiation.
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Results showed that conditional probabilities of failure-free survival, transformation-free survival, event-free survival, and overall survival for 1 additional year for patients alive after TKI treatment ranged from 92.0% to 99.1%, 98.5% to 100%, 96.2% to 99.6%, and 96.8% to 99.7%, respectively.
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Researchers found that conditional probabilities of transformation-free survival, event-free survival, and overall survival for 1 additional year remained at greater than 95%, while conditional failure-free survival did not improve with a deeper response each year.
The American Cancer Society estimates that approximately 6,660 new cases of CML will be diagnosed in the United States in 2015 and about 1,140 people will die from the disease. Nearly half of all cases are diagnosed in individuals 65 years of age or older.
Reference
- Sasaki K, Kantarjian HM, Jain P, et al. Conditional survival in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia in chronic phase in the era of tyrosine kinase inhibitors [published online ahead of print October 19, 2015]. Cancer. doi: 10.1002/cncr.29745.
