The cute lymphoblastic leukemia in childhood had been one of the most fatal disease in the past, but the survival has been significantly improved by newly developed anticancer agents and by advanced methods of chemotherapy.
Of 202 children who were diagnosed as acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the Department of Pediatircs. Seoul National University Children's Hospital from Jan. 1985 through Jul. 1989, 150 patients entered into evaluating the outcome of chemotherapy.
Each
patients was classified into four different groups; low risk group, standard risk group, high risk group, and lymphomaleukemia group according to the patient's age at diagnosis intitial white blood cell couuts, physical findings and the bone
marrow
findings during induction chemotherapy.
The remission rate was 95%(143/150) in total, and that of the each risk group was 100%(18/18) in the low risk group, 96%(75/78) in the standard risk group, 91%(30/33) in the high risk group, and 95%(20/21) in lymphoma-leukemia group. The event
free
survival rate after 5 years from initiation of chemotherapy was 68% in total, and that in the each insk group was 87% in the low risk group, 65% in the standard risk group, 75% in the high risk group, and 76% in the lymphoma-leukemia group.
Twenty
four
patients had relapsed(17% of remission successed patients, fourteen boys and ten girls), and among them four patients relapsed in two sites. The median duration of remission of these relapsed patients was 1 year and 5 months. The most frequent
relapse
site was bone marrow(17 cases, 60%), and the other sites were central nervous system and testis. Eleven patients(7% of all) died, and nine of them died of infection.
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