title: Surveillance and expected outcome of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children and adolescents: An experience from Eastern India.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Research in Eastern India especially among children and adolescents for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have not been well documented until recently when it was conducted at a cancer institute of tertiary care with primary objectives of examining and correlating different cell surface markers involved with respect to disease surveillance thereby highlighting it as a strong prognostic marker for future diagnosis and treatment.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 500 consecutively selected ALL patients were diagnosed and treated according to National Cancer Institute protocol (MCP 841) for a period of 24-88 months during this hospital-based study.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the total, 50.4% had a higher incidence of T-ALL and 47.6% had pro-B, B-cell precursor ALL. Disease free survival and event free survival were remarkably higher in B-ALL adolescent patients as compared to T-ALL, who had significantly lower overall survival ratio. Prevalence of T-ALL was also observed in relapse cases for adolescent patients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We conclude that there is an increased prevalence of T-ALL among adolescents in Eastern India. Immunophenotypic analysis might help in proper evaluation and prediction of treatment outcomes with an increased thrust on studying age-specific incident rates enabling well planned future treatments for improved and better outcome.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Oncology, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Cancer Research Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
authors.forename: Ashis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mukhopadhyay
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Cancer Research Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
authors.forename: Sudeshna
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gangopadhyay
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Cancer Research Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
authors.forename: Swati
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dasgupta
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Cancer Research Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
authors.forename: Samrat
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Paul
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Cancer Research Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
authors.forename: Soma
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mukhopadhyay
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Pathology, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Cancer Research Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
authors.forename: Ujjal Kanti
authors.initials: UK
authors.lastname: Ray
keywords: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia; B-acute lymphoblastic leukemia; T-acute lymphoblastic leukemia; immunophenotype; prognostic marker