“In Croatia, every week three persons are told they have AML, which is 156 annually, according to data from the Cancer Register for 2019. The five-year survival rate is 12.6%, compared to the EU average of 17.2%, which shows that there is considerable room for improving treatment”, the participating doctors and patients said at the round table.
AML is the most common type of acute leukemia in adulthood and the most frequent age at diagnosis is 65 years, with increasing incidence after 65 years of age. It has the lowest survival rate compared to other types of leukemia and is treatable in about 40 per cent of patients aged under 60 years, most frequently by bone marrow transplantation from an unrelated donor.
“In Croatia, we have 70,000 bone marrow samples and we can find an unrelated donor relatively quickly, which is why nearly every patient in Croatia has a chance to get a transplant and be cured. The number of transplantations has reached one hundred annually, which is within the European average,” haematologist Radovan Vrhovac said.
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