Definition of RCMD ?

[vikasgoyal]

Dad's diagnosis was RCMD with all cell lines impacted. His WBC and platelets have been persistently normal with only hgb been impacted. In lot of articles the definition of RCMD is when somebody has atleast 2 cytopenias. That confuses me a little. If he has 1 cytopenia and maybe dysplasia in all three lines does it fall into RCMD category?

[Neil Cuadra]

Vikas,

Since your father has only one low cell line in the circulating blood, that would normally be classified as MDS/RARS (refractory anemia with ringed sideroblasts) since I think you told us he had high sideroblasts. If I'm wrong about the sideroblasts then it would be MDS/RA (refractory anemia).

However, if his bone marrow biopsies show misshapen or wrong-sized cells then he'd be considered to have multiple dysplastic cells lines, putting him in the MDS/RCMD category.

In other words, it's a matter of how many cell lines are dysplastic, not how many produce low counts. Usually they match, but perhaps not always.

Do you have the results from one of his bone marrow biopsies?