The impact of Anaemia, Transfusion dependency, Comorbidities and Polypharmacy in elderly patients with low risk Myelodysplastic Syndromes

Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are heterogeneous organism disorders starting from indolent conditions with near-normal expectancy to forms approaching acute myeloid cancer. Comorbid conditions have seldom been consistently studied among patients with MDS. Older age as such includes a negative impact on survival of MDS patients, specifically of these with lower risk. However, age indirectly affects additionally the survival of higher-risk patients by limiting their eligibility to intensive treatments. Additionally, ageing is connected with a progressively high risk of developing comorbidity, and a high prevalence of comorbid diseases has so been reported in MDS patients. The impact of comorbidities and polypharmacy in patients with low-risk MDS patients is a poorly explored topic. We tend to focus on medications, multi-morbidities and comorbidities (occurrence of more than one disease in one person at same time) of 155 low-risk MDS patients followed within the hematologic outpatient’s clinics or in medical/oncology wards of our University Hospital. One or a lot of comorbidities were present at diagnosis in twenty four younger patients with MDS syndromes (31%), whereas fifty six older patients with MDS (75%) given one or a lot of comorbidities (P<0.001). the foremost frequent comorbidity was internal organ comorbidity eighteen in younger patients and twenty fifth in older patients. With no statistical significance between older and younger patients, congestive heart failure was the most frequent ascertained disease. Our study has shown a statistical correlation between transfusion dependency and polypathology (P=0.0014). These information were additionally confirmed in an exceedingly sub analysis of the younger cluster of patients. Our study has shown that comorbidity is very common among patients with MDS, potentially affecting the clinical course and outcome of MDS patients.

Author(s): Roberto Castelli

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