Retrospective Analysis of Patients with Refractory Cytopenia with Unilineage Dysplasia.

Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are a group of clonal heterogeneous bone marrow stem cell disorders characterized by dysplastic hypercellular marrows with peripheral cytopenias. Accurate diagnosis and classification are essential for subgroup identification and prognostic assessment of patients with MDS. Classification systems such as the World Health Organization (WHO) classification are widely used but do not always provide sufficient prognostic information. So WHO improved the classification systems last year(2008). The major change was that refractory anemia (RA) was substituted by refractory cytopenia with unilineage dysplasia (RCUD). The aim of this study was to apply the new WHO classification to re-evaluate MDS with RA.

MDS patients with RA diagnosed between 2000 and 2008 were retrospectively reclassified with WHO criteria (2008).

According to the new WHO classification, RCUD is intended to encompass those myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) which present with a refractory cytopenia with unilineage dysplasia and includes refractory anemia (RA), refractory neutropenia (RN) and refractory thrombocytopenia (RT), so in 34 cases diagnosed as RA, 12 cases (12/34,35%) still pertained to RA, 19 cases (56% ) to RN and 3 (9%) cases to RT. IPSS showed 94% of RCUD cases categorized as low or intermediate-I risk. The median survival of patients with RCUD was 84 months.

RA is the main subtypes of RCUD. Understanding the clinical features of RCUD accurately is helpful to determine the right subtype of RCUD. The new WHO classification system was improved to provide better diagnostic criteria.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.