A Risk-Oriented Therapeutic Strategy for Adult Acute Myelogenous Leukemia

The study was set up to assess: 1. A two-step, increasing-intensity remission induction phase. A conventional chemotherapy course (ICE, plus G-CSF) was followed, in unresponsive patients, by sequential high-dose cytarabine (plus G-CSF), aiming to provide an early effective rescue to as many refractory cases as possible. 2. A risk-oriented postremission consolidation phase. The objective was to adopt allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) in high-risk (HR) cases, while standard-risk (SR) ones were consolidated with a multicycle high-dose cytarabine-containing program, which included the use of autologous stem cells plus G-CSF to limit drug-related toxicity and intercycle treatment delays.