Patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) used to have only one treatment for a long term survival: allogeneic bone marrow transplantaion.
With the advent of Tyrosin Kinase Inhibitors (TKIs) that revolutionized the CML treatment, majority of CML patients have a life span close to that of general population.
However, due to some reasons, such as cost, sideeffects, some patients who have been on TKIs for many years with good response had to stop the TKIs. Surprisingly, in about 1/2 of those patients who stopped the TKIs, disease never recurred. This is called "TreatmentFree Remission (TFR). How long do the CML patients having TFR have to wait before declaration of CML? Only time will tell.