Myelofibrosis natural history, complications and prognosis
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Sujit Routray, M.D. [2]
Overview
The development of myelofibrosis is a a slow process and it does not cause early symptoms. A significant proportion of the patients can be asymptomatic and the diagnosis is usually made in the setting of an unrelated condition. The most overlapping and common findings encountered are anemia and splenomegaly presenting as weakness, easy fatigability, palpitations, and dyspnea in the case of anemia and early satiety with possible accompanying left upper quadrant discomfort if splenomegaly is present.
The disease has a progressive course and can result in pancytopenia as the bone marrow failure ensues. This can result in bleeding complications, easy bruising, increase in the susceptibility to infections, and worsening anemia. The bone marrow failure paves the way for extramedullary hematopoiesis which mainly occurs in the reticuloendothelial tissues.
If left untreated, myelofibrosis can lead to severe complications, the most feared of which are acute leukemia, heart failure, and portal hypertension.
Natural History
Myelofibrosis has a very indolent course.[1]
Complications
Common complications of myelofibrosis include:[2][3][4][5][6]
- Acute myelogenous leukemia
- Infections
- Bleeding
- Thrombohemorrhagic events
- Hepatic failure
- Heart failure
- Gout
- Progressive marrow failure
- Hypertrophic osteoarthropathy
- Splenic rupture
Prognosis
- Prognosis is generally poor and the median survival for myelofibrosis is 3.5 years to 5.5 years, but patients younger than 55 years have a median survival of 11 years.[5]
- Poor prognostic factors for myelofibrosis include:[5]
- Age 65 years or older
- Anemia (hemoglobin <10 g/dL)
- Constitutional symptoms (fever, night sweats, or weight loss)
- Leukocytosis (white blood cell count >25 × 109/L)
- Circulating blasts of at least 1%
- Patients without any of the adverse features, excluding age, have a median survival of more than 10 to 15 years, but the presence of any two of the adverse features lowers the median survival to less than 4 years.
- Karyotype abnormalities can also affect prognosis of myelofibrosis. In a retrospective series, the 13q and 20q deletions and trisomy 9 correlated with improved survival and no leukemia transformation in comparison with the worse prognosis with trisomy 8, complex karyotype, -7/7q-, i(17q), inv(3), -5/5q-, 12p-, or 11q23 rearrangement.[5]
References
- ↑ Diagnosis of myelofibrosis. Wikipedia 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelofibrosis. Accessed on March 8, 2016
- ↑ Complications of myelofibrosis. US National Library of Medicine 2016. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000531.htm. Accessed on March 7, 2016
- ↑ Signs and symptoms of myelofibrosis. Wikipedia 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelofibrosis. Accessed on March 7, 2016
- ↑ Kelle, Bayram; Yıldız, Fatih; Paydas, Semra; Bagır, Emine Kılıc; Ergin, Melek; Kozanoglu, Erkan (2015). "Coexistence of hypertrophic osteoarthropathy and myelofibrosis". Revista Brasileira de Reumatologia (English Edition). doi:10.1016/j.rbre.2014.11.004. ISSN 2255-5021.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Disease overview of primary myelofibrosis. National cancer institute 2016. http://www.cancer.gov/types/myeloproliferative/hp/chronic-treatment-pdq#section/_9. Accessed on March 10, 2016
- ↑ Complications of primary myelofibrosis. Dr Henry Knipe and Dr Yuranga Weerakkody et al. Radiopaedia 2016. http://radiopaedia.org/articles/myelofibrosis. Accessed on March 10, 2016