[Clinical staging and course of chronic lymphatic leukemia]

77 patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia were clinically staged according to a staging system recently proposed by Binet and limited to 3 stages. The 49 patients with stage A disease (not more than 2 areas of palpable nodes or organs) had a median survival time of 141 months; the 17 patients with stage B disease (three or more involved areas) had a median survival time of 71 months and the 11 patients with stage C disease (anemia and/or thrombopenia) had a median survival of 37 months. With this simple three-stage system statistically significant differences of survival between the three groups of patients have been observed. This staging system is useful for the prognostic evaluation of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.