Relationship of clinical staging and lymphocyte morphology to survival in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

The value of the Rai clinical staging system and lymphocyte morphology in predicting survival in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia was examined in 83 patients who had been followed for at least 5 years. Patients with less clinical evidence of disease (Stages 0 and I) had significantly longer survivals than patients with more evidence of disease (Stages II, III and IV). Patients in whom greater than 35% of the lymphocytes resembled benign atypical lymphocytes had longer survivals than those in whom most of the lymphocytes had narrow rims of cytoplasm and coarsely clumped chromatin. The survival differences in the morphologic groups were less striking than those in the clinical stages, and when the morphological groups were corrected for clinical stage, no significant differences in survival among the morphologic groups remained.