How often will I need a bone marrow biopsy?

How often will I need a bone marrow biopsy? How often do we need a bone marrow biopsy, as I explained, at diagnosis to make a correct diagnosis. Next, we will treat the patients with either chemotherapy or targeted therapies. Typically, we would do a second bone marrow after three weeks to see what is left. That's an early response. We don't see blasts. It doesn't mean there's no leukemia, but that's a very good sign. If we see blasts, we can modify our treatment regimen to give more treatment for longer period of time to get the patient into a remission. Again, the remission is defined by 5% blasts or less and normal blood counts, normal platelets, normal white cells, and normal hemoglobin, red cells. That's the first endpoint in treatment. With some treatments, it will take three cycles of treatment to get there. We would, again, typically do bone marrow diagnosis, bone marrow after three weeks, and then after two or three months to see where we are. Later, this will be done every six months and then once a year. After a few years, we will probably just monitor by blood counts. The longer the patient's in remission, the lower the likelihood of relapse. That is very important to understand. Most relapses occur during the first year. If the patient is disease-free without relapse for one year, the chance next year is much lower. If he's in remission for two years, the chance next year is, again, much lower. Most relapses occur during the first year, second year, and then the curve flattens off. There are few relapses after three years. They do happen on occasion, but it's very rare.