Fatores prognsticos em crianas e adolescentes com Leucemia Linfide Aguda

Abstract Objetives: to describe the clinical and laborator ycharacteristics, determine rates of response to treat-ment and pinpoint risk factors that influence thesurvival of pediatric patients with acute lymphoblasticleukemia (ALL).Methods: this is a retrospective series of casestudies involving 108 patients aged 18 years or underhospitalized for ALLtreatment at the Fundacao deHematologia e Hemoterapia de Pernambuco(HEMOPE), Brazil, between January 1993 andDecember 2001. The following variables wereanalyzed: gender, age, main symptoms and signs, whiteblood-cell count, immunophenotype and risk group ondiagnosis; rates of remission and relapse, death andoverall survival; place of relapse and risk factors forsurvival. Descriptive measurements were used for thestatistical analysis. The patient survival time was esti-mated using the Kaplan-Meier survival function andLog Rank. The effect of risk factors on sur vival time wasevaluated using the Cox Regression Model.Results: the results showed a male:female ratio of1.7:1, a median age of eight years on diagnosis, thefrequency of musculoskeletal complaints was 51%, ofinfiltration of the central nervous system 8%, of ALL-Precursor B 81% and ALL-T 19%. The distribution ofthe groups corresponded to True Basic Risk (12%),Basic Risk (21%) and High Risk (67%). The rates ofremission, relapse and overall survival were 86%, 24%and 62.5%, respectively.Conclusions: the variable having an impact onoverall survival was the white blood-cell count. Theoverall survival rate in the study was influenced by thehigh frequency of high-risk patients.