For patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), higher spleen volume at the time of hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) is linked with inferior overall survival (OS) and an increased incidence of nonrelapse mortality (NRM), according to a study published in the Annals of Hematology. Alexander Pohlmann, MD, and colleagues examined the predictive value of spleen volume on outcome parameters and engraftment kinetics after HSCT in a cohort of 402 patients with AML who received their first HSCT from 2012 to 2019, with a median follow-up of 33.7 months. Patients were subdivided based on median spleen volume of 238.0 cm3 into small and large spleen-volume (LSV) groups. LSV was associated with inferior OS after HSCT (55.7% vs 66.6% at 2 years) and with a higher cumulative incidence of NRM (28.8% vs 20.2% at 2 years). In the LSV group, the adjusted HR for NRM was 1.55. The groups did not differ in terms of time to neutrophil or platelet engraftment and the occurrence of acute or chronic graft-versus-host disease.
