Statistics and outlook for chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML)

Following on this page, is some information about the survival rates for chronic myeloid leukaemia. We have included it because many people have asked us for this. But not everyone who is diagnosed with a leukaemia wants to read this type of information. If you are not sure whether you want to know at the moment or not, then perhaps you might like to skip this page for now. You can always come back to it.

Please note that there are no national statistics available for different stages of cancer or treatments that people may have received. The statistics we present here are pulled together from a variety of different sources, including the opinions and experience of the experts who check each section of CancerHelp UK. We provide statistics because people ask us for them. But they are only intended as a general guide and cannot be regarded as any more than that.

The CancerHelp UK section about cancer statistics has information about the different types of statistics, such as incidence, survival and mortality. Unless you are very familiar with medical statistics, you may find it helpful to read this before you read the information below.

Remember that statistics are averages based on large numbers of patients. They cannot predict exactly what will happen to you. No two patients are exactly alike and response to treatment also varies from one person to another.

You should feel free to ask your doctor about your prognosis, but not even your doctor can tell you for sure what will happen. You may hear your doctor use the term 5 year survival. It does not mean you will only live 5 years. Researchers look at all the people who were included when the research studies began. And of that group of people they look at how many are still alive 5 years after diagnosis. Doctors follow what happens to people for at least 5 years after treatment in any research study. This is so that they can compare the results of different research studies.

The outcome of treatment for chronic myeloid leukaemia depends on a number of different factors. This includes how advanced it is (the stage) when it is diagnosed and how well it responds to treatment. You will need to talk this through with your own specialist. CML is often a slowly developing condition that can be kept under control for many years with treatment. But do remember that CML is very varied in how it behaves. It can develop very slowly in some people and more quickly in others. You will need to talk to your own doctor over a period of time to find out more about how it is behaving in your case. 

Treatment can often get rid of all signs of the CML for some time and this is called remission. Remission is when the disease is not active – you don't have symptoms and it doesn't show up in your blood samples. It can be possible to achieve a second remission with more treatment after a chronic leukaemia has come back (relapsed).

To work out cancer statistics on the success of treatments, we need to look back at how people have done in the past. When new treatments come out, the results will not show up in the statistics for quite a while. Since the introduction of imatinib (Glivec), a biological therapy drug, the outlook has improved a great deal for most people with CML. With imatinib, nearly 90 out of every 100 people (90%) live for at least 7 years. We haven’t been using Glivec long enough to know how long it will keep CML under control. Some scientists have used computer models and the data from large trials. They estimate that Glivec may keep CML under control for 19 years or more in people who respond to this type of treatment.

Unfortunately, Glivec doesn't work for some people. Others have CML that becomes resistant to Glivec over time. For these people, there are other new biological therapies available, such as dasatinib and nilotinib. These drugs are also looking promising. Ponatinib is a new biological therapy that is being used in clinical trials and also looks promising. In these trials it has worked well in patients with CML who have a mutation against other tyrosine kinase inhibitors and who have previously had other treatments.

More than half of the people who have intensive treatment with a bone marrow or stem cell transplant will live for 15 years or more. This type of treatment is mainly used for patients who have not responded to tyrosine kinase inhibitor drugs.

CML that has entered the aggressive blast phase is more difficult to manage. But treatment can sometimes get it back into chronic phase, where it is not so difficult to keep it under control. If CML in blast phase does not respond to treatment, unfortunately you are more likely to live for months, rather than years.

No statistics can tell you exactly what will happen to you. Your cancer is unique. The same type of cancer can grow at different rates in different people.

The statistics we have are not detailed enough to tell you about the different treatments people may have had. And how that treatment may have affected their prognosis. There are many individual factors that will determine your treatment and prognosis.

Research evidence shows that taking part in clinical trials may improve outlook. No one is completely sure why this is. It is probably partly to do with your doctors and nurses monitoring you more closely if you are in a trial. For example, you may have more scans and blood tests. There is more information in the trials and research section of CancerHelp UK. To search our clinical trials database for trials that are recruiting for chronic leukaemia, pick 'leukaemia: chronic' from the dropdown menu of cancer types.