Is bone marrow transplant necessary for acute leukemia?

Question

Hello doctor,

My friend's brother has been diagnosed with blood cancer and underwent his first chemotherapy three weeks ago. According to the acute leukemia immunophenotyping by flow cytometry report, morphologic and immunophenotypic findings are consistent with acute myeloid leukemia.

Immunophenotypic findings include 73.6 percent of viable cells that are myeloblasts. The blasts range from small to intermediate in size by forward light scatter and express moderate CD117, dim CD113, dim to negative CD33, bright CD34, heterogeneous CD38, and heterogeneous HLA-DR but are negative for CD10, CD20, CD3, CD45, CD56, and CD64.

Advice given includes cryogenic studies, including t (8,21), FLT3-ITD, NPMI, and CEBP-alpha mutation studies. The doctor suggests considering a bone marrow transplant for survival.

Please provide me with suggestions.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Hi,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

Sorry to hear about his ill health. The probable cause is acute myeloid leukemia. Investigations need to be conducted, including a cytogenetic study.

Let me tell you that after seven days of the first round of chemotherapy, a bone marrow biopsy should be done to check for the percentage of blasts.

Ideally, it should be less than a five percent blast after the first round of chemotherapy. Then, consolidation chemotherapy is given to prevent the relapse of leukemia cells. Stem cell transplantation can be done in young people, but it is costly.

Therefore, various chemotherapies and stem cell transplants are the only therapies available. The mentioned cytogenetic and mutation study will help in predicting prognosis. You can follow the advice of your hematologist-oncologist for your condition.

I hope I have clarified your query. Please feel free to reach out to me again in case of further queries.

Thank you.