What is changing in the natural history of chronic lymphocytic leukemia?
GROUND AND OBJECTIVES: In the last few years there has been a trend towards an improvement in overall survival of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Studies based on tumor registries of the general population or including patients referred to hematologic institutions have analyzed reasons for these changes. However, results need to be validated on independent series. DESIGN AND METHODS: We retrospectively evaluated 518 CLL patients diagnosed at our institution between January 1970 and December 1998. In this cohort of patients we looked at characteristics affecting natural history such as age and sex distribution, stage at diagnosis, survival probability and impact of the disease status on the actuarial survival. Trends in these variables were analyzed after splitting the whole series into three groups according to the period in which the diagnosis was made. Group I consisted of 75 patients diagnosed between 1970 and 1979, group II consisted of 149 patients diagnosed in t
