Method and Patients:
This is a retrospective case-controlled study of patients aged 1 to 14
years. who either had relapsed after administration of first-line
therapy for ALL or were refractory (resistant) to first-line therapy.
The study aims at evaluating clinical characteristics of children
diagnosed with refractory / relapsed ALL, determining 3-year overall
survival rate in children with refractory / relapsed ALL and to compare
risk-stratified groups in determining prognostic factors. Medical
records of the patients reviewed and data extracted for details of
baseline features at the time of diagnosis and at relapse. Pediatric
oncology research database was filtered for diagnostic and outcome
details of all patients diagnosed with ALL during the period January
2002 untill December 2018 and the study included newly diagnosed
patients with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) ,aged 1 to14 years at
the time of diagnosis , while patients with Down syndrome,
histopathological diagnosis of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) and Mature
B-Cell ALL, underlying diagnosis of Bone Marrow Failure syndromes and
records with incomplete data constituted the exclusion criteria on this
study.