Abstract
PURPOSE: To validate the clinical efficacy of the recently developed EUTOS long-term survival (ELTS) score in a real-world setting. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A total of 479 chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients treated with frontline imatinib between January 2010 and December 2017 were enrolled in this retrospective study. The ELTS score was evaluated on the end-points including complete cytogenetic response (CCyR), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS) and CML-related death, and the efficiency of the ELTS score was further compared with the historical Sokal, Hasford, EUTOS scores. RESULTS: With a median follow-up of 69 months (range, 9-112 months), 462 evaluable patients were stratified into the ELTS low-risk (n = 230), ELTS intermediate-risk (n = 168) and ELTS high-risk (n = 64) groups. For the regular assessment indicators like CCyR, PFS and OS, the ELTS scoring system could effectively identify the corresponding risk groups, similarly with the results provided by previous scoring systems. With respect to the CML-related death, the ELTS score could accurately identify a high-risk group with a significantly higher risk of dying of CML, and the 5-year cumulative incidence occurred in the ELTS high-, intermediate-, and low-risk groups was 11% (95% CI: 3-19%), 5% (95% CI: 1-9%) and 2% (95% CI: 0-4%), respectively. Most notably, the ELTS score outperformed the Sokal, Hasford and EUTOS scores without statistical difference among different risk groups. CONCLUSION: The ELTS score could effectively predict the prognosis of imatinib-treated CML patients in real-life settings.