Bone marrow transplantation
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Bone Marrow Transplant. · Feb 1997
Multicenter Study Clinical TrialEfficacy of amphotericin B lipid complex injection (ABLC) in bone marrow transplant recipients with life-threatening systemic mycoses.
Bone marrow transplant (BMT) recipients are at increased risk of invasive fungal disease as a result of the profound neutropenia associated with transplantation. Amphotericin B lipid complex injection (ABLC, ABELCET) was developed to preserve the broad spectrum and fungicidal activity of conventional amphotericin B while avoiding its associated nephrotoxicity. ABLC was made available to physicians in an emergency-use program to treat seriously ill patients with advanced fungal infections who had failed to respond to previous systemic antifungal therapy (mostly amphotericin B), had experienced nephrotoxicity or severe acute toxicity due to amphotericin B or other drugs, or had pre-existing renal disease. ⋯ For 30 patients who began ABLC treatment with a serum creatinine > 221 mumol/l, significant reductions were observed at weeks 1 to 3 (P < 0.01) and 6 (P < 0.001). Trends in serum creatinine during ABLC therapy between autologous and allogeneic transplant recipients were similar. In summary, the results of this evaluation indicate that ABLC appears to be less nephrotoxic than conventional amphotericin B as well as an effective treatment for BMT recipients with presumed or confirmed fungal infections.
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Bone Marrow Transplant. · Feb 1997
Multicenter StudyDo patients with metastatic and recurrent rhabdomyosarcoma benefit from high-dose therapy with hematopoietic rescue? Report of the German/Austrian Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplantation Group.
Patients with primary metastatic or recurrent rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) have a very poor prognosis. Since high-dose chemotherapy (HDC) +/- TBI was thought to improve survival, many centers performed this therapy using different types of hematopoietic rescue (auto BM or PBSC, allo BM). This is a retrospective, multi-center analysis of the results of treatment in 36 patients with primary metastatic or relapsed RMS who were given HDC +/- TBI and hematopoietic rescue between 1986 and 1994. ⋯ The tumor recurred in the majority of patients at previously known sites; in three cases new metastatic sites were observed. Patients with primary localized tumors who had been treated with HDC because of relapse did slightly better (four of nine alive with NED) than patients with primary metastatic disease (five of 27 alive with NED). HDC is still of uncertain value in the therapy of poor-risk rhabdomyosarcoma and should be performed only as part of controlled clinical trials.
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Bone Marrow Transplant. · Feb 1997
Quality of life measurement in bone marrow transplantation: development of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Bone Marrow Transplant (FACT-BMT) scale.
We developed a 12-item bone marrow transplant subscale (BMTS) for the general Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT) measure. The subscale combined with the FACT, (FACT-BMT) is a 47-item, valid and reliable measure of five dimensions of quality of life in bone marrow transplant patients. The three-step validation process involved the generation and selection of BMT-specific items and the testing of the overall measure. ⋯ The BMTS was able to discriminate patients on the basis of performance status rating and also demonstrated sensitivity to change over time. The FACT-BMT has good psychometric properties for use in assessing quality of life in bone marrow transplant patients. The addition of the bone marrow transplant subscale to the general FACT measure makes it an excellent choice for use in BMT clinical trials.