[Our experiences in the treatment of acute leukemias].

This paper deals with observations concerning treatment of acute leukemia in the Department of haematology of The Clinical hospital of Belgrade during the period from 1970 to 1975, and with results of the treatment itself. During the last five years, 27 patients with different types of acute leukemia were treated. The type of acute leukemia was determined using cytological criteria of Levy and Lortholary and cytochemical criteria as described by Hayhoe. One thrid of the patients died during the first days of hospitalisation, before any effect of cytostatic treatment could be evaluated. The cause of death in those patients was septic shock, intracranial haemorrhage or cardiovascular colapsus; initial signs of those complications of acute leukemia were allready present before diagnosis. Those data point to the fact that diagnosis of acute leukemia is often made too late, when irreversible ocmplications of the disease are allready established. Patients over sixty, often "fragile" to aggresive cytostatic therapy, may enter complete and relatively long lasting remission with induction therapy cosisting of 6-mercaptopurine and methotrexate only. Allthough the number of cases was rather limited, the authors had rather disappointing results with the 06-LA-66 protocole in adult lymphoblastic leukemia. The first with COAP treatment protocole seem encouraging. Adequate cytostatic therapy was in several cases impossible, duo to the lack of adequate substitution therapy; such inadequate cytostatic therapy resulted in partial remissions with a rather poor quality survival. A beeter cooperation is needed between hospital centers and institutions which provide matherial for the substitution theapy.