[Treatment plan and informed consent]

Since STI571, a BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase inhibitor, has made a great therapeutic advance in the management of CML, we have to reconsider the treatment protocol for chronic phase CML. Interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) will be replaced with STI571 therapy. However, some patients are reported to become refractory to STI571, and it is unclear whether STI571 therapy alone may be sufficient to induce long-term survival in CML. There are also important progress in the field of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (SCT); i.e. minitransplant(non-myeloablative SCT) and cord blood stem cell transplantation. Currently, newly-diagnosed CML patients in chronic phase should be initially treated with STI571. If the patients are appropriate candidates for allogeneic SCT and have HLA-indentical sibling donors, allogeneic SCT should be conducted within one year. The other patients should also receive related or unrelated allogeneic SCT if Ph suppression is insufficient with STI571 therapy for several months. The patients who are not candidates for allogeneic SCT may be treated with IFN-alpha and/or Hydrea(or cytosine arabinoside) in addition to STI571 if they become refractory to STI571. Since each therapeutic modality has different risk and benefits, informed consent is very important to determine the treatment plan for individual patients.