Prognostic significance of stratification systems in multiple myeloma. I. Risk categories (good and poor risk)

A group of 193 patients with multiple myeloma (MM) consisting of cases treated only symptomatically or by nonsystematic therapy with Cyclophosphamide or Melphalan (1959-76), and of patients given systematic polychemotherapy with intensive supportive treatment (1976-84) were subjected to prognostic analysis of the importance of MM stratification into two categories, poor and good risk. The evaluation included only hitherto untreated patients with MM of the IgG, IgA, and Bence-Jones' types. All the three evaluated stratification systems (ALGB, NCI-SECSG and CALGB) were found in the present study to show a good, equally significant relation to the prognosis of the disease. The survival median of poor risk patients in terms of the used classification system for the 1959-76 subgroup was 5-6 months, for the 1976-84 subgroup 20-22 months. In the good risk category it was 24-27 months in the 1959-76 subgroup and 47-50 months in the 1976-84 subgroup. Permanent validity of the initial prognosis and in the poor risk category safe coverage of patients with a high risk of early death was proved. Good agreement of the studied stratification systems with the clinical staging system of Durie and Salmon [14] (most of the Stage III patients consisted of poor risk patients) was recorded, which, however, was not the case with the staging system of Merlini, Waldenström and Jayakar [27]. The CALGB system is considered the most suited to the needs of clinical practice.