The therapeutic goals of essential thrombocythemia under the clouds of over-treatment and under-treatment.

INTRODUCTION: Therapeutic stratification after the accurate essential thrombocythemia (ET) diagnosis is made based on the medical history (age, previous thrombosis), clinical assessments (cardiovascular [CV] risk factors, comorbidities, systemic diseases), laboratory examinations (leukocytosis, extreme thrombocytosis, anemia) and if available further sophistical analyses (CD34 count, JAK2V617F homozygosity, and mutant allele burden). AREAS COVERED: Current conventional therapeutic tools for reaching those goals are observation, low-dose aspirin, hydroxyurea, anegrelide and interferon alpha. Those treatment modalities are used alone or in combination to get the therapeutic goals in ET patients. The ET literature search was made in PubMed with particular focus on the clinical trials, recommendations, guidelines and expert opinions. EXPERT OPINION: The most important step for the therapeutic decision of ET in the clinic is the risk assessments. Clinical decision making starts with the detection of the age and the prior thrombosis history of the ET patient. Treatment goals in ET are to avoid thrombosis and bleeding, to treat ET-related symptoms, improve quality of life and to minimize risk of malignant transformation and/or post-ET myelofibrosis.