[Various induction therapies in older patients with acute myeloid leukemias]

Due to unmanageable complications the results of high-dose chemotherapy for remission induction were significantly worse in a group of elderly patients with AML than for younger ones (greater than vs. less than 50 years: CRR 44% vs. 78%, p = less than 0.005). Hence, different induction schedules were studied for older patients with AML. A high response rate to low-dose cytosine-arabinoside (LD-CAR) was observed in myeloblastic and promyelocytic leukaemias, but the complete remission rate was low. Induction treatment with VP 16-213, aclacinomycin, cytosine-arabinoside and thioguanine resulted in a high complete remission rate (69%). Toxic side effects cannot be excluded in individual cases. These results justify prospective studies to evaluate the significance of the efficacy of these induction schedules.