Myelodysplastic syndrome: a study of prognostic factors.

Forty-three patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) were retrospectively analyzed for its prognostic factors. We evaluated the relationship of the clinical, biochemical, and hematological data, as well as colony-forming unit myeloid (CFU-C) culture, Bournemouth score, modified Bournemouth score, and modified Dutcher score to the prognosis. The median age was 65 years. Eighteen patients had refractory anemia (RA), 4 had refractory anemia with ringed sideroblasts (RARS), 15 had refractory anemia with excess blasts (RAEB), 2 had refractory anemia with excess blasts in transformation (RAEB-t), and 4 had chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMMoL). The median survival of all patients was 482 days. The median survival for each subtype was as follows: RA, 628 days; CMMoL, 350 days; RAEB, 240 days; RAEB-t, 90 days. For RARS, no data have yet been obtained, because only one out of 4 patients with RARS has died. We subdivided all patients into two groups: one group included patients with RA or RARS and the other group included patients with RAEB, RAEB-t or CMMoL. The former group had a median survival of 677 days and the latter group 240 days, p = 0.0035. In the former group, 3 out of 22 patients (13.6%) developed acute myeloid leukemia (AML), as compared to 8 out of 21 patients (38.1%) in the latter group, p = 0.0661. Twenty-five of the 43 patients died: 10 from AML and 15 from infection and/or bleeding.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)