Resumen de Decitabine in acute myeloid leukemia: Evaluation of effectiveness and safety in a tertiary hospital

Andrés García Márquez, María Henar García Lagunar, Mónica Martínez Penella, Mª Carmen Mira Sirvent

• Introduction: Decitabine is a new hypomethylating drug that has recently been approved in patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) who are not considered candidates for induction chemotherapy. This fact is an interesting development in routine clinical practice.

  Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness and toxicity of decitabine in a group of patients with AML.

  Method: Retrospective study including patients treated with decitabine from January 2014 to June 2016. Variables collected were age, blast percentage in the bone narrow test at the beginning of the treatment, classification of AML, Progression Free Survival (PFS), Overall Survival (OS) and adverse events.

  Results: Decitabine was prescribed in nine patients with a mean age of 76.4 ±5.5 years. Patients had a PFS of 2 months (interquartile range 1-3) and an OS of 3.5 months (interquartile range 1.4-6). The most frequent adverse events were neutropenia, anemia and thrombocytopenia.

  Conclusion: Our data of PFS and OS were lower than the results of survival in the data sheet and hematologic adverse events were very frequent, so the drug requires a special handling in patients with AML