Effect of Treatment in a Specialized Pediatric Hemato-Oncology Setting on 5-Year Survival in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Survival rates of adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are inferior to those of pediatric ALL patients. In part, this may be caused by differences in treatment setting. Generally, children are treated in specialized pediatric hemato-oncology settings, whereas AYAs are treated in adult hemato-oncology settings. Since 2005, adult treatment protocols have included pediatric-inspired chemotherapy, which has been the standard of care for AYAs from 2008 onwards. This study aims to assess whether, despite protocols in both settings having become more similar, th... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Margrietha van der Linde
Nikki van Leeuwen
Frank Eijkenaar
Anita W. Rijneveld
Rob Pieters
Henrike E. Karim-Kos
Dokumenttyp: Text
Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
Verlag/Hrsg.: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Schlagwörter: ALL / specialized pediatric hemato-oncology care / site of treatment / AYAs / 5-year survival / regression discontinuity / The Netherlands / causal inference
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26809979
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers14102451

Survival rates of adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are inferior to those of pediatric ALL patients. In part, this may be caused by differences in treatment setting. Generally, children are treated in specialized pediatric hemato-oncology settings, whereas AYAs are treated in adult hemato-oncology settings. Since 2005, adult treatment protocols have included pediatric-inspired chemotherapy, which has been the standard of care for AYAs from 2008 onwards. This study aims to assess whether, despite protocols in both settings having become more similar, there remains an effect of treatment in specialized pediatric hemato-oncology settings on 5-year survival for ALL patients in the Netherlands. We used nationwide registry data (2004–2013) on 472 ALL patients aged between 10 and 30 years old. A fuzzy regression discontinuity design was applied to estimate the treatment effect using two-stage least squares regression with the treatment threshold at 17 years and 7 months of age, adjusting for sex, age at diagnosis, and immunophenotype. We found a risk difference of 0.419 (p = 0.092; 95% CI = −0.0686; 0.907), meaning a 41.9 percentage point greater probability of surviving five years after diagnosis for ALL patients treated in specialized pediatric hemato-oncology settings. Our results suggest that ALL patients around the threshold could benefit from increased collaboration between pediatric and adult hemato-oncology in terms of survival.