Medline ® Abstracts for References 55,59

During 1982 and 1983, 4496 new cases were recorded in the French Registry of acute leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes by the French Group of Hematologic Morphology. This cooperative group associated members of 37 university centers spread throughout France; these centers handle the overwhelming majority of acute leukemias diagnoses. The cases were all classified according to FAB guidelines. Two thousand four hundred ninety-nine cases of acute myeloid leukemia were recorded, with similar total recruitment and distribution by cytologic subclass for both years. Hemogram data analysis revealed significant differences between different classes for certain parameters, particularly leukocytosis. A greater proportion of the acute myelogenous leukemias (AMLs) secondary to chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy (n = 145) were unclassifiable according to the French-American-British (FAB) system than the de novo AMLs (n = 1954). Eight hundred twenty cases of myelodysplastic syndromes were analyzed. Their frequency was underestimated due to optional reporting during the first year and the less favorable position of the university centers for recruiting these syndromes. The characteristics of the hemograms were established for acquired idiopathic sideroblastic anemia (n = 107), refractory anemia with excess blasts (RAEB) (n = 329), chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (n = 129) and RAEB in transformation (n = 65). Analysis of the 1177 acute lymphoblastic leukemias (ALLs) recorded showed good stability from one year to the next in terms of numbers of cases and distribution in the subclasses L1, L2, and L3. The distribution among these three subclasses by age also was determined. For L1 and L2 the hemogram data were examined separately for adults and children. The study of 74 cases of type L3 ALL enabled us to detail the hematologic presentation of this rare form of leukemia.

This study consists of 65 patients (pts) who developed a myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) (39 pts) or acute myeloid leukemia (AML) (26 pts) following chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy; the interval from the onset of therapy to bone marrow abnormality ranged from 11 to 192 months (median, 58). Thirty-three patients had been previously treated for lymphoproliferative diseases, 29 for carcinoma, and three for a nonneoplastic disorder. Approximately 30% of the cases presenting in the MDS phase evolved to AML in one to 12 months (median, 3.5). The AML in 49% of the cases was not readily classified according to French-American-British (FAB) criteria; the primary difficulty in classification related to the involvement of multiple cell lines. Among the cases that could be classified, all FAB types were represented except for M1; M2 was the most frequent type. Clonal chromosome abnormalities were found in marrow specimens from 22 of 24 (92%) patients studied with G banding; 11 had abnormalities of chromosomes 5 and/or 7. The median survival for all patients was four months with no significant difference between those treated and not treated with antileukemic therapy. The median survival was three months for the patients presenting with AML, six months for the patients with AML following an MDS, and four months for the patients with an MDS that did not evolve to AML. The findings in the present study suggest that there are three stages of therapy-related panmyelosis: (1) pancytopenia with associated myelodysplastic changes, (2) a frank MDS, and (3) overt AML. Many patients will present in the stage of overt AML that differs from de novo AML primarily by the high incidence of trilineage involvement, difficulty in classification, frequent cytogenetic abnormalities, and poor response to antileukemic therapy. The myelodysplastic phase, with or without evolution to acute leukemia, is a highly lethal disease with a median survival comparable to that of the patients who present with AML.