Prognostic Impact Of Time From Diagnosis To Initial Chemotherapy For Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Background: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has been considered as oncologic emergency and therefore, immediate initiation of chemotherapy is common in clinical practice. On the other hand, waiting until cytogenetic and molecular results return could offer individualized therapies according to the risk stratifications of AML based on cytogenetic or molecular abnormalities. There are few data on the impact of delaying induction chemotherapy on the prognosis of AML. According to one study, time from diagnosis to initial treatment (TDT) of more than 5 days had adverse impact on younger AML patients, but not older patients (Sekeres et al. Blood 2009). Another study showed TDT had no impact on overall survival (OS) at all age (Bertoli et al. Blood 2013). We retrospectively analyzed the impact of TDT on outcome of newly diagnosed AML patients in our institution.