N Engl J Med 2006;354:166-78

Treatment of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
Ching-Hon Pui, William E Evans
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and University of Tenesee Health Science Center

Almost 4000 cases of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are diagnosed annually in the United States, approximately two thirds of which are in children and adolescents, making ALL the most common cancer in these age groups.  Optimal use of the same antileukemic agents that were developed from the 1950s through the 1980s, together with a stringent application of prognostic factors for risk-directed therapy in clinical trials, has resulted in a steady improvement in treatment outcome.  In the 1990s, the five-year event-free survival rates for childhood ALL generally ranged from 70 to 83 percent in developed countries with an overall cure rate of approximately 80 percent.¹ Emerging results suggest that a cure rate of nearly 90 percent will be attained in the near future.

PMID: 16407512 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]