Treatment of acute myelogenous leukemia in a Mexican pediatric hospital

Acute leukemia is the most common malignancy in children, and accounts for nearly 35% of all childhood cancers. Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) constitutes about 20% of acute leukemias. Initially, treatment of AML involves the immediate management of emergencies associated as hyperleukocytosis, tumor lysis syndrome, hemorrhages and infections. Therefore we performed a retrospective, descriptive and transversal study to investigate the drugs used in patients with AML who were admitted at the Hospital del Niño DIF from 2007 to 2008. Data were collected from hospital. The data included demographic, clinical data and drug usage. A total of 13 patients (12 male and 1 female) were included (prevalence of 16.5% among all cancers in the hospital). The mean age of patients was 6.2 +/- 4.6 years. The mortality rate was 30.8%. Twelve different drugs were given to the patients (10 antineoplastic agents, ondansetron and folinic acid). The median number of drugs/inpatient was 5.4 (range 3-9). Four-hundred thirty-one doses of antineoplastic drugs were administered in 409 sessions. The most used were cytarabine (55.9 %), followed by doxorubicin (7.2 %) and vincristine (6.7 %). Three-hundred twenty-four doses of ondansetron were administered in 409 sessions. We conclude that AML is common in our hospital with a high mortality rate. Also, the antineoplastic agent most used was the pyrimidine analogue cytarabine.