Day +130

I am fine today. I went to church this morning.

Today, I would like to explain to you what made me so determined to go for the risky bone marrow transplant.

On my blog Day +66, I mentioned that my first cytogenetic analysis indicates that my blood’s chromosome was abnormal. The abnormality is called 3q deletion whereby one of the pair no. 3 of the chromosome was shortened. Unfortunately, this type of abnormality categorized me under bad risk group.

After I was discharged from the hospital, I studied carefully a report by Tulio E. Rodriquez, MD and Patric J. Stiff, MD, Current treatment results of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation for acute myeloid and lymphoid leukemia. Curr Hematol Rep. 2003 Jul;2(4):295-301. The report gave me quite a good understanding on the prognosis (long-term survival rate or percentage of 5 years disease free) of my disease.

The report said that the long-term survival rate (5 years disease free) of a high risk AML patient is 15% only. An allogeneic stem cell transplant might increase the survival rate to 40% to 60%. However, doctor also told me that the mortality rate of transplant is about 15% to 20% during transplant and 5% after transplant. So the overall mortality rate due to transplant is about 20% to 25% which make the transplant a risky procedure. Nevertheless, the significant improvement in prognosis makes the procedure worth to try.

The report also mentioned that low risk group has a 50% survival rate with chemotherapy treatment along and stem cell transplant does not bring further improvement. Thus, transplant is only recommended after a relapse for low risk group.

With these statistics in mind, I determined to go for transplant.

See you next post :-)