Successful treatment of acute myelomonocytic leukemia developed from essential thrombocythemia with cytarabine plus etoposide

: A 77-year-old man was diagnosed as having essential thrombocythemia (ET) in 1994. He had been treated with hydroxyurea (HU) for six years, and 9 years after the diagnosis of ET, he then developed acute myelomonocytic leukemia (AMMoL) following myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Since he suffered from ischemic heart disease, we chose the ara-C+VP-16 therapy. Two courses of the ara-C+VP-16 therapy resulted in partial remission in the bone marrow and a prolonged hematological response. This case seemed rare, since in previous reports, prognosis of ET patients developing MDS and AML was very poor and most of the patients expired within six months.