Survival in Elderly Patients Diagnosed With Acute Myeloid Leukemia: A Hospital-Based Study

Background: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a hematological ne-oplasm that is more frequent in elderly patients. The objective of this study was to evaluate elderly patients' survival with de novo AML and acute myeloid leukemia myelodysplasia-related (AML-MR), treated with intensive and less-intensive chemotherapy and supportive care. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted in Fundacion Valle del Lili (Cali, Colombia), between 2013 and 2019. We included patients >= 60 years old diagnosed with AML. The statistical analy-sis considered the leukemia type (de novo vs. myelodysplasia-relat-ed) and treatment (intensive chemotherapy regimen, less-intensive chemotherapy regimen, and without chemotherapy). Survival analy-sis was performed using Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression models. Results: A total of 53 patients were included (31 de novo and 22 AML-MR). Intensive chemotherapy regimens were more frequent in patients with de novo leukemia (54.8%), and 77.3% of patients with AML-MR received less-intensive regimens. Survival was higher in the chemotherapy group (P = 0.006), but with no differ-ence between chemotherapy modalities. Additionally, patients with-out chemotherapy were 10 times more likely to die than those who received any regimen, independent of age, sex, Eastern Coopera-tive Oncology performance status, and Charlson comorbidity index (adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 11.6, 95% confidence interval (CI) 3.47 -38.8). Conclusions: Elderly patients with AML had longer survival time when receiving chemotherapy, regardless of the type of regimen.