DR COLE: How often do you do marrows to assess for minimal residual disease? Are you doing it before every cycle?

DR CORTES: No, not every cycle. Certainly at the end of induction and before you start your consolidation, see where you are. Then I think every 2 or 3 cycles for a little while. And then if things look very stable, then I think you can cut down significantly on the number of bone marrows and go by your counts.

If you start seeing all of a sudden a change in the recovery time, et cetera, then you do it. But I don’t think you need to be marrowing the patient with every cycle. So once you’ve achieved a remission, I’d do it maybe every 2 or 3 cycles and then less after that, if they’re still sustaining the remission.

Module 1: Current and future approaches to targeted therapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML)

Module 2: Other clinical issues in AML management

Module 3: Case discussions