[Prognostic factors in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia--with special consideration of pre-diagnostic duration of signs (author's transl)].

It is concluded from the prognostic factors of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, as far as they have become known up to now, such as initial leukocyte count, extent of organ infiltration, etc, that the pre-diagnostic duration of signs, representing a measure of the proliferation activity of the leukaemia cells, could also represent a relevant prognostic characteristic. A check conducted in 90 children treated between 1966--1975 yields a correlation only between a very short pre-diagnostic duration of signs (less than 2 weeks) and the duration of the first complete remission (as well as the survival time). However, even those prognostic factors which are already generally recognised, possess merely limited reliability, because they do not take the individual response to therapy into account. Hence, improvement of prognosis of the course of the disease can be expected only if the continuous decrease of the remaining population of blasts during the early phase of remission can be determined with greater accuracy than before.