Survival rates for chronic myeloid leukemia

New, highly effective drugs to treat most cases of CML first became available in 2001. There is no accurate information yet on how long patients treated with these drugs may live. All that is known is that most patients who have been treated with these drugs, starting in 2001 (or even before), are still alive.

One large study of CML patients treated with imatinib (Gleevec) found that about 90% of them were still alive 5 years after starting treatment. Most of these patients had normal white blood cells and chromosome studies after 5 years on the drug.