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Video

How have treatments for acute myeloid leukemia evolved over the years?

Description

Learn about how treatments for AML have evolved over the years in this HealthTree University lesson by a cancer specialist.

On this video

Healthtree contact David Rizzieri, MD, Specialist

David Rizzieri, MD, Specialist

Duke Health

Transcript

How have treatments for AML evolved over the years? So the treatments for AML have evolved tremendously just over the last decade. Previously, we were like a one-trick pony. We had standard combination aggressive chemotherapy and take it or leave it. It worked sometimes. It didn't work other times. And you may or may not benefit from an allogeneic stem cell transplant. Currently, with our evolving understanding of the disease and what drives the disease in the specific patient, we've been able to develop many more therapies that can be applied to patients with specific findings in their AML. So we have the ability now to target a patient's AML much more so than we used to. So chemotherapy often is still part of the primary plan, but less and less so. And the newer therapies are focused on optimizing response while we minimize toxicity and damage to the patient. And often that's because we can better target the specific patient's leukemia rather than general chemotherapy that will poison the whole body.

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