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The different types of leukemia are cancers of cells of the hematopoietic system responsible for producing blood, typically characterized by changes in the growth and division of blood cells, or rapid growth of abnormal blood cells. All together these types of cancer make up less than 5% of all malignant tumors and may show up in a variety of forms and can be acute or chronic. To be precise, acute myeloid leukemia is the most common type of leukemia in adults and becomes more frequent in adults over 60.

With that in mind, and with the aim of revising the approach to treating elderly patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), Dr. Adolfo de la Fuente, associate physician with the Hematology Service at MD Anderson Cancer Center Madrid, has taken part in the ‘III Annual Penthema AML Workshop’, organized by the Cooperative Groups of PENTHEMA (Spanish Program for Treatments in Hematology) and CETLAM (Study and Treatment of Acute Leukemias and Myelodysplasia).

The consultant specialist participated in the scientific meeting with a talk, ‘New treatment approaches for AML in the elderly patient’. “The elderly patient with acute myeloid leukemia poses a number a challenges.

In the first place, an elderly person is more complicated to deal with when receiving chemotherapy due their inherent fragility”, says Dr. de la Fuente. Furthermore, it is also quite common for the elderly to have kidney or heart problems, which complicates treatment of the disease. “For that reason, we specialists must take side effects into careful consideration when dealing with an elderly patient with acute myeloid leukemia, both because the immune system is weakened and because of the associated co-morbidities”, explains the hematologist.

Additionally, the specialists gathered at the conference have pointed out that, as the patient ages, clinical treatment of acute myeloid leukemia becomes more complicated at a biological level. The happens particularly over 70 years of age, which means that conventional chemotherapy will give poorer results than in younger patients.

“After a certain age we must take into account that biologically, the disease is going to be more treatment resistant. Therefore, the development of new strategies, including targeted treatments, will be fundamental to improving adherence to treatments”, concludes Dr. de la Fuente.

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