Outcome for Australian children with acute leukaemia is influenced by
ethnicity and the metro-regional divide
Abstract
Objective: To compare disease presentation and outcome in Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal children with acute leukaemia and to assess the impact of
remoteness and area-based socioeconomic disadvantage. Design: A
retrospective review of children treated for acute leukaemia from South
Australia (SA), Northern Territory (NT) and Western Australia (WA)
between 2009 and 2018. Setting: Women’s and Children’s Hospital (WCH),
Adelaide and Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH) - the sole referral sites
for paediatric cancer for SA, NT and WA. Participants: Eligible
patients, aged between 1 day and <18 years, diagnosed with
acute leukaemia. Main Outcome Measures: Leukaemia diagnosis and overall
survival. Results: Analysis of 455 children treated for acute leukaemia
showed inferior survival outcomes were associated with remote/very
remote localities (p=0.004). Five-year overall survival was 91.7% (95%
CI: 87.9%-94.3%) for children with ALL and 69.8% (56.7%-79.5%) for
AML. A large percentage of Aboriginal children from SA/NT were diagnosed
with AML compared to others (60.0% vs. 14.4%, p=0.001). A trend
towards inferior overall survival was seen for Aboriginal children with
ALL compared to non-Aboriginal children (82.4% vs. 92.2%, p=0.07) and
55.6% were high-risk by study criteria; however, MRD testing did not
identify any high MRD cases. Aboriginal children were less likely to be
enrolled on clinical trials (34.5% vs. 53.1%, p=0.03) and more likely
to be lost to follow-up (41.4% vs. 13.2%, p<0.001).
Conclusion: Aboriginal ethnicity and geographic remoteness of residence
are adverse prognostic factors for Australian children with leukaemia.
Additional strategies are required to ensure improvements in follow-up
and survival of these children.