Baris Yilmaz

and 4 more

Background When developed countries are considered; in the treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the survival rate has reached 90% in recent years. We aimed to examine the survival rate and the factors that may affect this rate, especially in our patients treated with the ST Jude Total Therapy XV protocol. Procedures Pediatric patients aged 1-18 years, who were treated at our hospital and completed their treatment between January 2011 and December 2018, and only pre-B and T-cell leukemias treated with the St Jude Total Therapy XV protocol were included in the study. Results The 5-year event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) were 78.3% and 80%. We observed that some factors that affect survival, such as gender, blastic type, risk group, and number of WBCs, did not affect survival in our study. Even though it is known that the female gender has better EFS, in our study, the survival of girls was found to be lower than boys. Tragically, we observed that the most common cause of death (20/23, 87%) was infection and infection-related causes. Conclusions The primary purpose of the St Jude Total XV treatment protocol is to monitor minimal residual disease (MRD) and to guide treatment according to MRD results. It is also the removal of radiotherapy from treatment protocols by adding additional intra-thecal treatments (ITT). However, unfortunately, if we cannot protect our patients from infection and other related factors, the factors that make a difference in treatment become meaningless.