Pediatric Myelodysplasia: A Study of 68 Children and a New Prognostic Scoring System

Clinical, morphologic, and cytogenetic features were exam-ined in a group of 68 children with myelodysplasia (MDS) referred t o a single institution between 1971-1991. The mor-phologic French-American-British (FA61 system of classifi-cation proved of limited value in this group of patients be-cause 50 % of the cases were categorized as chronic myelomonocytic leukemia and three patients with eosino-philia and MDS were unclassifiable. Cytogenetic analysis was performed in 63 cases and clonal abnormalities were detected in 5596; the most common chromosome involved was number 7. Modification of the FAB system to incorpo-rate additional diagnostic features such as pretreatment fe-tal hemoglobin (Hb F) and cytogenetics allowed incorpora-tion of the categories of juvenile chronic myeloid leukemia (JCML) and infantile monosomy 7 syndrome (IMo7). The re