Is There a Role for Flow Cytometry in the Evaluation of Patients With Myelodysplastic Syndromes?

Abstract

This review focuses on the most recent literature concerning flow cytometry (FCM) application for diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Aberrant FCM results have been defined as abnormalities in at least three tested features comprising at least two bone marrow (BM) cell compartments. FCM results should be interpreted together with the BM smear cytology, the morphological assessment of BM biopsy, and cytogenetic results. Including FCM in the pre-treatment assessment may provide not only diagnostic but also prognostic information. Further studies are needed to evaluate the role of FCM in individual risk assessment for MDS patients and in therapy choice and/or follow-up.

A simple score derived from bone marrow immunophenotyping is important for prognostic evaluation in myelodysplastic syndromes

“…First, we confirmed the prognostic value of the increase in CD34 + myeloid progenitors and decrease of B-cell progenitors, which has already been described by our group 4 , 11 , 18 as well as by others 1 , 4 , 6 , 7 , 10 , 11 , 14 , 16 , 18 , 27 . The number of phenotypic alterations in CD34 + myeloid progenitors were also associated with survival, but were less important as their total number in the multivariate Cox regression, and especially in the bootstrap stability test.…”

Visualization of Cell Composition and Maturation in the Bone Marrow Using 10‐Color Flow Cytometry and Radar Plots

“…Although limited by a small cohort size and lack of control group of patients with non-clonal cytopenias, our findings are aligned with the finding in previous studies in terms of reproducibility of the patterns (35) and distribution of CD34 1 cell subsets in MDS (31,36). Our model integrates FC findings described previously in separate subset analysis and maps them on multidimensional plots, which makes abnormal patterns readily recognizable.…”

A single‐tube flow cytometric procedure for enhancing the diagnosis and prognostic classification of patients with myelodysplastic syndromes

“…There is a wide range of parameters, some FCSS use only a few, while others are more complex. All FCSS can provide useful information for the diagnosis of MDS, because they have high sensitivity and specificity . In some cases, the results of MFC examination can be more sensitive and specific than morphology .…”