Acute myeloid leukemia

Abstract

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a systemic disease that is metastatic from diagnosis; therefore, the problems typically associated with local and regional control, i.e., those associated with surgery and radiation therapy, do not play a role. Since virtually all patients who die as a result of a malignant disease die of systemic (metastatic) cancer, AML has served as a prototype illness for the development of systemic therapies, and advances in the control of this disease have been rapidly applied to the control of the more common metastatic cancers in man.