Trends in long-term survival of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia from the 1980s to the early 21st century

Abstract

Although chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has remained incurable with standard treatments, newer therapeutic approaches, such as chemoimmunotherapy or stem cell transplantation, bear the potential for prolonged survival. We estimated trends in age-specific 5- and 10- year absolute and relative survival of CLL patients in the United States between 1980-1984 and 2000-2004 from the 1973 to 2004 database of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program. Period analysis was used to disclose recent developments with minimum delay. Overall, 5- and 10-year absolute survival from diagnosis increased from 54.2% to 60.2% (+6 percentage points; P