[Chronic myeloid leukemia]

Chronic myelocytic leukemia is a malignant clonal disorder which, after a chronic phase of about 3 to 4 years, progresses to blastic transformation. The disease is incurable by conventional cytostatic treatment. Once blastic transformation has ensued, survival is limited to weeks or months. Interferon may prolong the chronic phase, but data are controversial. Allogeneic bone marrow transplantation may cure 40 to 70% of patients treated while in chronic phase. Survival is about 20% in advanced disease, depending mainly on age, sex of donor and clinical condition. Allogenic bone marrow transplantation was hitherto restricted to patients having an HLA-identical bone marrow donor. Volunteer bone marrow donor registries now contain about 400,000 registered unrelated healthy donors: The chance of finding an unrelated bone marrow donor is now between 10 and 60%, and the chance will increase when donor registries expand.