Thirty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology

Abstract

The 37th annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology was held in Seattle, Washington, from December 1-5, 1995. This paper will briefly highlight a number of important clinical reports relevant to malignant hematology and high dose chemotherapy programs from among the more than 4000 abstracts submitted to this important international meeting. S. Forman (Duarte, California) presented an evaluation of the survival of adults with acute lymphocytic leukemia treated with either an allogeneic transplantation (from a histocompatible sibling donor) or continued consolidation chemotherapy, after attaining a complete remission following induction therapy. In this analysis, there was no significant difference in disease-free survival or overall survival between the two therapeutic strategies. R Rowlngs (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) reported the results of an analysis of prognostic factors among > 1000 women undergoing autologous bone marrow transplantation for metastatic breast cancer. Features predicting for a poorer outcome following treatment with high dose chemotherapy, included: age >45 years; the presence of "refractory disease"; a short time interval between diagnosis and the performance of the transplant; the presence of visceral or central nervous system metastatic disease; and the absence of estrogen receptor positivity on the tumor. B. Bolwell (Cleveland, Ohio) reported the experience of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation Bone Marrow Transplantation program with salvage treatment of Iymphoma employing bone marrow transplantation. While transplanted patients with low-grade lymphomas continued to relapse > 2 years after the procedure, no patient with a high grade lymphoma in a continuous remission after this 2 year time point has relapsed.