Quality of Life and Economic Impact of Red Blood Cell (RBC) Transfusions on Patients with Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS).

Background: Supportive care with blood product transfusions is the primary management strategy for the majority of patients with MDS. Approximately 80% of MDS patients are anemic at the time of presentation and more than 40% require regular RBC transfusions at some stage of disease, while platelet transfusions are less often required.

Methods: In an effort to systematically study quality of life and economic cost associated with transfusion dependency (especially RBC transfusions), The MDS Foundation has disseminated a practices and treatment survey to its Centers of Excellence and is also accumulating transfusion data. Retrospective and prospective data collected include hematologic parameters defining transfusion need; percentage (%) of MDS patients requiring transfusion; % of transfusion-dependent MDS patients by subtype and International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS) risk group; per patient frequency of transfusions; % of patients requiring iron chelation therapy.

Results: A total of 30 Centers have replied to the survey to date, and responses reveal that a substantial proportion of MDS patients receive multiple RBC transfusions with most of these patients needing chelation therapy with desferoxamine (generally subcutaneous administration, 4-times weekly): Table 1.

In addition, detailed data are available from 4 European Centers that have provided transfusion records from randomly selected multiply-transfused MDS patients: 38 patients (median age: 73) received a median of 42 transfusions over the last 24 months (range: 11–207). The average per transfusion costs calculated from estimates provided by the 4 European centers is 436 euros or $ 526 ($1 US dollar = 0.83 euros), where the per transfusion cost includes 2 filtered red blood cell units, blood collection, administrative costs, and staff time, resulting in a median per patient cost over the last 24 months of 11,118 euros (range: 5668–21,800 euros). This does not include the cost of chelation therapy (300 euros/month for desferioxamine SC) and indirect costs (e.g., time spent at transfusion facility, travel time for patient to facility, travel and wait time for private caretaker or family member).

Conclusion: Preliminary data analysis from the ongoing retrospective study suggests that the transfusion burden to MDS patients and to society, in terms of quality of life and cost, is much greater than generally appreciated. Updated data of this study will be presented.

Table 1: RBC Transfusion-dependent MDS patients