The Response to Chemotherapy as Prognostic Marker in Multiple Myeloma

Objectives: Even though the correlation between the degree of therapeutic response and overall survival was studied for a long time, there are still contradictory opinions. This study intends to evaluate the prognostic value of response to chemotherapy in terms of patient survival and depending on the type of therapy.
Material and method: The study analyses 110 patients diagnosed and treated between January 2006 and September 2012. Descriptive analysis of cases was performed and survival analysis was realised using Kaplan-Meier curves compared to logrank test.
Results: The median survival was 18 months when the patients were treated with vincristine + adriamycin + dexamethasone, 20 months with melphan + prednisone, 71 months with melphalan + cyclophosphamide + vincristine + prednisone (p = 0.020), 33 months with Bortezomib and 4 months with dexamethasone. A percent of 38.18% of patients responded near completely to therapy, partial response occurred in 29.09% of cases and no response/ refractory disease in 32.72%. The patients had a median survival of 62 months for near complete response to therapy, 20 months for partial response and 4 months for no response/ refractory disease (p < 0.0001). The time to disease progression was of 24 months regardless of the used therapy. The most common adverse effect was anaemia.
Conclusions: Lack of response to treatment is a negative prognostic factor in the evolution of multiple myeloma patients.