There are many factors that physicians consider when developing a treatment strategy. These factors include a patient's age, sex, and complete blood count numbers, among other things. Before choosing which treatment to use, a doctor will study all available test results to determine the extent that the disease has spread, a process called staging.
Over the past 30 to 40 years the outlook for children with AML has vastly improved. Once, the disease was almost always considered fatal. Today the cure rate for AML is close to 50 percent with chemotherapy treatment, and the cure rate is 70 percent with a matched sibling donor bone marrow (stem cell) transplant.
