[Treatment of relapsing acute leukemia]

Responses of multicombination chemotherapy with BH-AC . DMP regimen in relapse in adult acute leukemia showed significant decrease in terms of remission rate, duration of remission and survival time, in comparison to that in previously untreated cases. This strongly imply that clinical resistance to the drug previously used had developed in patients with relapsing acute leukemia. Therefore, antileukemic agents which have no cross resistance to those used previously should be selected for relapsing cases with much more intensive fashion of treatment than that used in the prior treatment. Ninety per cent of the long-term survivors in acute leukemia who had a single relapse had survived at 7 years, whereas only 30% of the patients who had multiple relapses had survived so. In other words, when the first relapse was treated successfully, the patients still have a good change to be cured. This results suggest that total care system has to be developed for relapsing acute leukemia.