Prognostic factors of survival time after hematopoietic stem cell transplant in acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients: Cox proportional hazard versus accelerated failure time models

Abstract Background The aim of this study is to evaluate the prognostic factors of overall survival (OS) after haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) patients using accelerated failure time (AFT), Cox proportional hazard (PH), and Cox time-varying coefficient models. Methods 206 patients were enrolled after HSCH in Shariati Hospital between 1993 and 2007. There was evidence of marked departures from the proportional hazards assumption with two prognostic factors, relapse and chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) (P Results The 5-year OS was 52% (95%CI: 47.3–56.7). Peak mortality hazard occurred at months 6–7 after HSCT followed by a decreasing trend. In univariate analysis, the data was better fitted by GG distribution than by other distributions. Univariate analysis using GG distribution showed a positive association between OS with acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) (P = .021), no relapse (P 2 = 0.46 for AFT, R2 = .21 for Cox PH and R2 = .34 for Cox time-varying coefficient). Cox-Snell residual shows Weibull AFT fitted to data better than other distributions in multivariate analysis. Conclusion We concluded that AFT distributions can be a useful tool for recognizing prognostic factors of OS in acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients.