Delayed engraftment associated with splenomegaly in patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation for chronic myeloid leukaemia.

There is no general agreement about the effect of an enlarged spleen on the outcome after bone marrow transplantation (BMT) for chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). In this retrospective analysis, we compared rate of engraftment, haematological recovery and survival in 42 CML BMT recipients, 19 with splenomegaly and 23 without. Other variables analysed included interval from diagnosis to BMT, disease status at BMT, conditioning regimen, additional splenic irradiation, marrow cell dose, donor recipient ABO match and graft-versus-host disease. In multivariate analysis, the only significant variable was the presence or absence of splenomegaly. Splenomegaly was significantly correlated with delayed engraftment and graft failure. Patients with delayed engraftment experienced higher mortality, largely due to sepsis. These results emphasize the adverse impact of splenomegaly upon BMT survival in CML, and suggest that splenic irradiation does not favourably affect the early outcome after BMT.