Haematology

The study find that the acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have a one-month mortality rate of 41% and overall survival (OS) of 1.5 months; Because  according to a research letter publish in the June issue of the American Journal of Hematology. Therefore Vijaya R. Bhatt, M.D., from the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha; and colleagues conduct an analysis to determine treatment practices and outcomes of an unselect cohort of octogenarian patients with AML.

One-month mortality rate

Records are identify for 112,308 patients with newly diagnose AML; 15.2% of whom are octogenarians. The final study population include 12,099 patients. Therefore A patient is any person who receives medical attention, care; or treatment. The person is most often ill or injure and in need of treatment by a physician or other medical professional; although one who is visiting a physician for a routine check-up may also be view as a patient.

The researchers found that 41 percent of the patients received chemotherapy within a median of seven days of diagnosis. Patients received a multi agent, single-agent; or unspecified chemotherapy regimen (25.3, 70.2, and 4.5%, respectively). Because Reasons for not receiving chemotherapy included the presence of contraindications; patient or family refusal, death prior to therapy, it was recommended but not administered for an unspecified reason, and other unspecified reasons (16.4, 14.3, 3.2, 0.7, and 65.4%, respectively).

Utilization of chemotherapy

Only 0.07% of patients received hematopoietic cell transplant. One-month mortality was 41% and median OS 1.5 months. Median OS was better for patients who did versus those who did not receive chemotherapy (3.2 versus 0.9 months). “The poor utilization of chemotherapy; high one-month mortality, and poor long-term OS of octogenarians with AML in this large database study demonstrate an unmet need of this patient population,” the authors write.

Chemotherapy, in its most general sense, refers to treatment of disease by chemicals that kill cells, both good and bad, but specifically those of micro-organisms or cancerous tumours. In popular usage, it refers to antineoplastic drugs used to treat cancer or the combination of these drugs into a cytotoxic standardized treatment regimen. In its non-oncological use; the term may also refer to antibiotics (antibacterial chemotherapy).

Most general sense

In that sense, the first modern chemotherapeutic agent was Paul Ehrlich’s arsphenamine, an arsenic compound discovered in 1909 and used to treat syphilis. This was later followed by sulfonamides discovered by Domagk and penicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming.Most commonly, chemotherapy acts by killing cells that divide rapidly, one of the main properties of cancer cells. Other uses of cytostatic chemotherapy agents (including the ones mentioned below) are the treatment of autoimmune diseases