Therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia following postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy including cisplatin and fluorouracil for esophageal carcinoma

Abstract

We report a case of therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (t-AML), which developed following chemotherapy involving cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil for esophageal carcinoma. A 70-year-old man with past history of esophageal carcinoma, which was treated with subtotal esophagectomy 32 months earlier followed by 2 courses of chemotherapy involving cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil, was diagnosed with t-AML. His leukemia was resistant to chemotherapy, and the patient died from pneumonia 4 months after being diagnosed with leukemia. Although treatment for esophageal carcinoma is associated with a markedly lower frequency of therapy-related myeloid neoplasms than treatment for certain other malignancies such as hematological neoplasms, it is important to be aware that therapy-related myeloid neoplasms can occur as late complications of esophageal carcinoma treatment.