Myelodysplastic syndromes: a scoring system with prognostic significance.

141 patients with MDS were classified according to the FAB criteria and followed up for a period of 4-192 months. It was recognized that patients with RAEBT had a uniformly poor prognosis. However, there was a wide variation in survival among the other subgroups. A score of 1 was assigned to each of the following presenting haematological features: bone marrow blasts greater than or equal to 5%, platelets less than or equal to 100 X 10(9)/l, neutrophils less than or equal to 2.5 X 10(9)/l and Hb less than or equal to 10.0 g/dl. Therefore the score for each patient ranged between 0 and 4. There were no statistically significant differences between those patients who scored 0 or 1, or between those who scored 2 and 3. Therefore patients were put into three groups: Group A (score 0 or 1), Group B (score 2 or 3), Group C (score 4). The differences in survival between each of the three groups are highly significant (P less than 0.00001). This system further separates patients with RA, RAS, RAEB into good and bad prognostic groups. This study also confirms that deaths due to cytopenias are more common than those due to transformation to AML. The use of this scoring system in conjunction with the FAB criteria for MDS should serve as a prognostic tool on which to base treatment.