Letters to Editor Figure 1B – Folicular lymphoma (n = 112) Figure 1C – Multiple myeloma (n = 129) Figure 1D – Hodgkin’s lymphoma (n = 132) Figure 1E – Acute myeloid leukemia (n = 97) enrolled 184, 166 patients diagnosed with lymphoid neoplasms between 1995 and 2002 in 48 European cancer registries and the French study reported twenty-five years (1980-2004) of data on 5086 patients with myeloid malignancies, including AML (Table 1). This study does not allow a critical comparative analysis because of the limited number of patients studied. Besides, it should be reinforced that comparisons of survival of patients require that individual neoplastic entities be grouped into clinical categories with similar prognoses. However, in general our data compare favorably to these reports. The possible reasons for Rev Bras Hematol Hemoter. 2012;34(2):168-71 this are based on the improvements in the quality of care which have been introduced in the Vale do Paraíba over the last decade, new treatment options such as rituximab, thalidomide and proteasome inhibitors and more intensive chemotherapy followed by autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (which has been used in this region since 2004) as well as the practice guidelines for the use of antimicrobial agents in neutropenic patients with cancer, hospital environmental precautions and allogeneic bone marrow transplant from related or unrelated donors probably should have led to a better survival rates for our patients. 169