The evolution of the loss of life expectancy in patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia: a population-based study in the Netherlands, 1989-2018

Abstract

Studies on the conditional life expectancy of patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) are lacking. Using data from the Netherlands Cancer Registry, we examined the life expectancy of patients with CML in the Netherlands diagnosed during 1989-2018. As of the early 2010s, the life expectancy of patients with CML who survived several years after diagnosis came narrowly close to the general population's life expectancy, regardless of age. This finding can essentially be ascribed to the introduction and broader application of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) and provide optimism to patients with CML who can look forward to a near-normal life expectancy in a modern TKI era.

Keywords: chronic myeloid leukaemia; epidemiology; imatinib; leukaemia; mathematical modelling.

Fig 1

Trends in various survival measures of patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia diagnosed in the Netherlands between 1989 and 2018. (A) depicts the life expectancy of the general population (dashed lines) and patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML; solid lines) by year of diagnosis for four ages, stratified by sex. The shaded area around the life expectancy of patients with CML portrays the 95% confidence interval for the point estimates, which was obtained using the Delta method. (B) presents the loss of life expectancy of patients with CML by year of diagnosis for four ages, stratified by sex. (C) presents the proportional loss of life expectancy of patients with CML by year of diagnosis for four ages, stratified by sex.

Fig 2

The conditional loss of life expectancy of patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia diagnosed in the Netherlands. The conditional loss of life expectancy is presented according to four age groups at diagnosis, stratified by sex and four selected calendar periods of diagnosis.