[Treatment of recurrence of acute myeloid leukemia in childhood. A retrospective analysis of recurrence in the AML-BFM-83 study]

Complete remission (CR) rates of 80% are achieved with the AML-BFM protocols but one third of patients relapse within the first three years. There are few reports of treatment of relapsed childhood AML, and these deal with the evaluation of new drugs for frontline therapy. We performed a retrospective analysis to investigate how patients previously treated with the AML-BFM-83 protocol were treated after relapse and how many long term remissions were achieved. 48 of 139 patients relapsed after having achieved complete remission with the AML-BFM-83 protocol which consists of continous infusion of ARA-C 100 mg/m2 day 1-2, ARA-C 200 mg/m2 day 3-8, Daunorubicin 60 mg/m2 day 3, 4, and 5, and VP-16 150 mg/m2 day 6, 7, and 8, and an 8 week consolidation therapy consisting of Prednisolone, Thioguanine, Vincristine, ADR, ARA-C, Cyclophosphamide, intrathecal ARA-C and cranial irradiation followed by maintenance therapy. Duration of first remission ranged from 1.5 months to 66.3 months. Excluding 5 children with either isolated or combined extramedullary relapses and another 4 patients for missing data, 39 children were evaluable. 20 children received no therapy or palliative therapy while 16 patients received chemotherapy and another 3 children were transplanted in relapse. Although 9 different intensive chemotherapy regimens were used for reinduction, a high number (12 of 16 = 75%) of second complete remissions was achieved. Several therapeutic options were used to maintain a second remission: regular maintenance therapy (7 patients), allogeneous bone marrow transplantation (BMT) (2 patients), autologous BMT (3 patients).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)