[The International Prognostic Scoring System for primary myelodysplastic syndrome]

A number of prognostic scoring systems for patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) have been introduced since FAB classification of the MDS in 1982. Recently, the International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS), published in 1997 by Greenberg et al. [9] is based on the percentage of bone marrow (BM) blasts, cytogenetic abnormalities and number of cytopenias. We applied criteria of the IPSS on 205 patients (pts) with primary MDS (RA = 82, RARS = 49, RAEB = 42, RAEB-t = 8, CMML = 24 pts). IPSS discriminated within each of the FAB-subgroups: RA pts were present in low risk and intermediate (Int) I and II risk subgroups, RARS pts were separated into low and Int I, RAEB were distributed predominantly between Int I and Int II risk groups, RAEB-t in high-risk group, and CMML pts were distributed in all groups. In contrary to Greenberg's group of the MDS patients there are only three risk-groups in our study: low risk (score 0-0.5), intermediate (1-2) and high risk (> 2); the median survival and the risk of the evolution to the acute leukemia (p = 0.0001) are significantly different.