Results back

[Faye R]

Hi had a phone call from Haematology results back from BMBT it didn't make sense to me first of all was told that the Bone Marrow was empty or slightly empty both was mention, I did a bit of home work this is what I think it means that the Vidaza has worked and all of my cells now are gone and they are now waiting to see what will happen next. I'm of Vadaza having another blood test next Thursday start Vidaza again on the following Monday. Has anyone been taken off Vidaza for a short time and put back on it again. My last blood results reads:-
Haemoglobin 99
Haematocrit 0.30
MCV 113
MCH 37
Platelets 37
WBC 0.9
Neutrophils 0.32
Lymphocytes 0.5
Monocytes 0.03
Eosinophil's 0.02
Basophils 0.01
Will be interesting as to what they DX me this time round, don't have the full report as yet
DX RCMD-RA

[Cheryl C]

Any blasts, Faye?

[Faye R]

Hi I don't know have got the full bone marrow report printed out won't know until I go back in had blood tests done to-day and probable won't know those results until to-morrow keeping fingers toes etc crossed that all is good
DX Rcmd -ra

[DanL]

Faye,

The bone marrow is empty comment is an interesting one. i am wondering if they were referring to the cellularity of the marrow - ie how dense the marrow is. As a general rule, you would expect cellularity to be 100 minus your age in years. So in my case, the rule of thumb would say 100 -41 years of age for an expected cellularity of 59% give or take about 10% to hit the "normal" ranges. Marrow with low cellularity has trouble producing enough blood cells as they go through their cycle. Hypo-cellular MDS is less common but I think makes up to about 20% of cases out there. Most MDS is hypercellular, meaning that the marrow is more dense and crowded than would be expected. When I went in for transplant last year, I was around 90-95%.

The other possibility as Cheryl suggested is that it may also mean that you have a normal amount of blasts, which is always nice news to hear because it means that the factory is producing good cells and that the rest of your system does not have to search and destroy the defetive cells.

As for the taking people off of vidaza and restarting - this has been done in some trials, but I think that the consensus is that unless the patient begins to see marrow suppression or failure to respond to VIdaza that you should keep going with it until it stops working, and in these cases, it is more of a dose delay or reduction strategy.

[Faye R]

DanL
on the bone marrow report is this comment :-
Moderately hypocellular overall. Cellularity is patchy with some profoundly hypocellular areas and others of 60% - 70% cellularity.
Cell types: All haemopoietic cells are present. Reduced number of megakaryocytes and markedly reduced number of mature neutrophils. Granulocytes left-shifted with abnormal localisation of immature precursors'
DX RAEB-2