Treatment of acute myeloid leukaemia in older patients - scope of intensive therapy? - A retrospective analysis

Purpose: Therapeutic regimens and outcome of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) patients substantially improved over the past decades. However, AML in older patients is still widely understudied and therapeutic standards are far less well defined. This study provides a retrospective analysis of a cohort of AML patients above 65 years of age treated at a single university centre in Germany. Methods: Treatment regimens including intensive chemotherapy with or without subsequent allogenic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT), hypomethylating agent (HMA) or low-dose cytarabine (LD-AraC) based therapy or best supportive care (BSC) were evaluated and compared to patient-specific variables, comorbidities indices such as Haematopoietic Cell Transplantation-specific Comorbidity Index (HCT-CI) or Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), or Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status to assess their potential impact on outcome. Results: 229 patients >= 65 years with newly diagnosed AML were included in this study. Patients received either intensive chemotherapy (IT) without (n = 101, 44%), or followed by allo-SCT (n = 27, 12%), HMA (n = 29, 13%), LD-Ara-C (n = 16, 7%) or best supportive care (BSC) only (n = 56, 24%). Of interest, ECOG performance status predicted overall survival in patients treated with IT, and combinatorial assessment of ECOG and HCT-CI was particularly useful to predict outcome in this subgroup of patients. Conclusion: Subsets of AML patients above 65 years of age benefit from intensive chemotherapy and allogenic stem cell transplantation. Combined assessment of ECOG scores and HCT-CI might help to objectively identify suitable patients, and this concept should be further investigated in a prospective manner in future studies.