Progression of bone marrow abnormalities in malignant hemopoietic dysplasia. Evaluation of cytological changes with serial bone marrow samples.

Progression of bone marrow abnormalities in 12 patients with malignant (fatal) hemopoietic dysplasia (HD) was evaluated retrospectively in sequential bone marrow samples, using a simple morphological scoring technique. Special attention was paid to alterations in cytological abnormalities in the myeloid series. Patients who developed acute myeloid leukemia showed increasing scores during the clinical course and a rapid final increase in particularly myeloid nucleolar abnormalities. Patients who did not develop overt myeloid leukemia but died from bleeding and/or infection had low and stable scoring and showed no progression of cytological abnormalities. Repeated evaluation, especially of cytological changes in the bone marrow, and morphological scoring might be useful as predictive tools to estimate the risk of a leukemic transformation in some patients with HD.