Recommendations of the canadian consensus group on the management of chronic myeloid leukemia.

Chronic myelogenous leukemia (cml) is a disease characterized by the expression of Bcr/Abl, an oncogenic protein tyrosine kinase, and by evolution over time from a relatively benign chronic phase to a rapidly fatal cml blast crisis. Until recently, the standard of care included potentially curative therapy with allogeneic stem cell transplantation, available only to a minority (about 10%) of patients, or medical therapy with interferon-α with or without cytarabine, which helped to prolong the chronic phase of the disease in a minority of patients. The availability of imatinib mesylate, a selective inhibitor of Bcr/Abl approved by Health Canada in 2001, has profoundly altered the clinical and laboratory management of cml. This change in practice has been reviewed by the Canadian Consensus Group on the Management of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia and has resulted in a new set of recommendations for the optimal care of cml patients.