[Treatment of patients with acute myeloid leukemia--use of Toronto criteria in evaluation of success in therapy].

Over the period from January 1, 1972 to January 1, 1982, a total of 320 patients with acute myeloblastic leukaemia (AML) was registered in our institution. Only 289 case histories were suitable for analysis. In this paper we present the distribution of patients according to the risk group denomination prepared by the Toronto Leukaemia Study Group of Canada. The effect of such stratification of patients with AML is evaluated in our patients. The results are here with discussed. 160 male (median age = 57.7 yr.) and 128 female (median age = 58.0 yr.) patients are presented. Distribution of these patients according to the age is compared to the distribution of similar patients included in the British AML-8 trials and with the total incidence of newly diagnosed AML in England and Wales, in one year (1983). It is shown that the cohort of patients, included in the recognized foreign trials, is not representative of the natural population with respect to morbidity and mortality from AML--similar conclusion concerns this group of patients which comprises the largest single-centre series reported hitherto in the Yugoslavia literature. Thus, the success of therapy of AML as reported in available literature from this country and elsewhere is necessarily, and perhaps incautiously, inflated and statistically distored. The number of complete remissions and the median survival-time of the patients presented varied significantly in our study in accordance with the exclusion steps performed. Without the exclusion of risk groups the percentage of complete remissions was 35.3 per cent and the median survival was 3.0 months. With all the substractions these values were 51.72 per cent and 7.0 months, respectively.