ORLANDO – Patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) initially treated at an academic center lived significantly longer than those treated at nonacademic centers, a database analysis shows.
Median overall survival increased from 7 months at a nonacademic center to 12.6 months at an academic center (P less than .001).
One-year overall survival rates were also significantly better at 51% vs. 39% (P less than .001).
Patrice Wendling/Frontline Medical News
Mr. Smith Giri
The difference remained significant even after controlling for important confounders including age, comorbidity burden, receipt of chemotherapy, transplant, and delay between diagnosis and treatment, Mr. Smith Giri reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.
“From a policy perspective, it may be useful to know whether these results are due to higher volume of cases, more advanced technology, expanded role of specialists, or greater, round-the-clock availability of resident physicians,” said Mr. Giri of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis.
Prior studies in cancer have suggested better overall survival among breast cancer patients treated at academic centers, but this is the first study looking at outcomes in AML, the most common acute leukemia in adults.
Using the National Cancer Database Participant User File, the investigators identified 7,823 patients with AML who received their initial therapy at the reporting facility from 1998 to 2011. The database collects information from more than 1,500 Commission on Cancer (CoC)–accredited facilities. Of the 7,823 patients, 4,681 (60%) were treated at an AC (academic/research program) and 3,142 at a non-AC (community cancer program/comprehensive community cancer program).
Patients treated at an AC were significantly younger than those treated at a non-AC (median 62 years vs. 67 years), tended to be of nonwhite race, less educated, have a lower income, and more comorbidities.
Receipt of chemotherapy (97.4% vs. 94.5%) and transplant (9% vs. 2.4%) were significantly higher at an AC than a non-AC (both P less than .001).
Kaplan Meier survival curves suggested disparate survival curves between the two groups, mainly within the first 5 years of follow-up (P less than .001), Mr. Giri said.
In multivariate model analysis, the non-AC group had significantly worse risk adjusted 30-day mortality than the AC group (odds ratio, 1.52; 95% confidence interval 1.33-1.74; P less than .001) and worse overall survival (hazard ratio, 1.13; 95% CI 1.07-1.19; P less than .001).
The study (Ab. 533) findings should be interpreted with caution because of its limitations, including the lack of information on AML risk type in the database, the fact that administrative datasets are prone to coding errors, and because the analysis did not adjust for hospital volume, which has been shown to affect survival, he said. Also, because there are more than 3,500 non–Coc approved hospitals, the sample may not be representative of overall U.S. hospitals.
During a discussion of the results, Mr. Giri acknowledged that patients treated at academic centers may have greater access to clinical trials and experimental agents. Future analyses should also distinguish patients with a diagnosis of acute promyelocytic leukemia, a distinct subset of AML.