Prognosis in chronic myeloid leukemia]

The clinical course of patients with chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML) is very heterogenous. Survival is determined by the timing of disease transformation. A patient's risk of transformation can be defined, but the time when it will occur can not be predicted. A number of features recorded at the time of diagnosis correlate significantly with survival and can serve as prognostic parameters. Conventional therapy has not achieved a substantial delay in the universally fatal outcome of the disease. Allogenic or syngenic bone marrow transplantation to individuals with CML is at present the only treatment with a curative potential.