Improvement of Early Death in Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia: A Population-Based Analysis

In order to analyze the early death rate of APL and its associated factors, we selected 3212 APL patients from 1986 to 2015 in the SEER database, of which 683 (21.3%) patients were noted for early death. we found that the early death rate in APL has decreased over the past few years, and older age, lower socioeconomic status were major factors affecting early death. These findings could give insights for clinicians to elaborately assess the epidemiology and risk factors of early death in APL.Background: Early death is a major factor of treatment failure in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), however, the recent trends in the incidence of early death based on the population-level are not clear. Hence, this study is aimed at describing the incidence, recent trends, causes and character istics of ear ly death in APL based on the real world.Materials and Methods: APL patients diagnosed from 1986 to 2015 in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) dataset were enrolled, and categorized based on gender, age, year of diagnosis, race, marital status, resident county and socioeconomic status (SES). The risk factors for all-cause and acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) specific early death were determined by univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses, and stratified analysis was conducted by age.Results: Overall, 3212 APL patients were included in analysis between 1986 and 2015, of which a total of 683 (21.3%) patients were noted for early death. Significant differences were recognized for patient distribution by age, year of diagnosis, marital status, and SES. The early death rate of APL patients diagnosed during 2006-2015 was significantly lower than that of the early stage, but this trend was not evident in juvenile patients. At the same time, older age, and lower SES score were independent risk factors for early death in the multivariate analysis. Conclusion: We established that the early death trend in APL has decreased over the past few years, but the early death rate remains high, especially in older patients and those with lower SES.