BACKGROUND Patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) often require hospitalisation. CRB-65 is a simple and useful scoring system to predict mortality. However, prognostic factors such as underlying disease and blood oxygenation are not included despite their potential to increase the performance of CRB-65. METHODS The study included 1172 consecutive patients (830 inpatients, 342 outpat...

Therapy planning in patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDSs) is complicated by its high prognostic heterogeneity. Forty-one patient and disease characteristics at onset of 370 patients with MDS were analyzed to identify significant prognostic factors for survival and transformation to acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML), and to develop and validate a regression model for predicting survival...

BACKGROUND Overexpression of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is found in many types of neoplasms. The aim of the study was to evaluate EGFR expression in colorectal cancer (CRC) specimens and to determine whether EGFR expression correlates with clinicopathological data and overall survival. PATIENTS AND METHODS Tissue specimens from 181 consecutive CRC patients treated at the Military...

Clinical and laboratory features of 642 consecutive Chinese subjects with primary myelofibrosis (PMF) were analyzed and compared with those of 1054 predominately white subjects with PMF. Chinese subjects were significantly younger, fewer had constitutional symptoms, and fewer had a palpable spleen or liver. Anemia, in contrast, was significantly more common in Chinese as was an increased white ...

PURPOSE Serum beta(2) microglobulin (beta2M) is prognostic in other hematologic malignancies; therefore, we evaluated its prognostic significance in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Multivariate analyses were used to examine the effect of pretreatment serum beta2M levels on clinical outcomes in patients with AML. beta2M was associated with poorer survival in older but not you...

Splenic marginal zone lymphoma (SMZL) is a rare indolent B-cell neoplasm with hepatitis virus supposed to involve in the pathogenesis. The characteristics of SMZL derived from Caucasia population and high hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection region have been widely investigated, but few was reported in the Eastern population with HBV prevalent region. We analyzed the clinical characteristics, cyto...

BACKGROUND Dys-megakaryopoiesis is defined as ≥10 % of dysplastic megakaryocytes in bone marrow smears by the World Health Organization. However, concordance rates for dysplastic megakaryocytes between different observers is low and, consequently, evaluation of dysmegakaryopoiesis is also often discordant. RESULTS We performed CD41 immune staining and proposed a systematic classification of d...

BACKGROUND Risk stratification based on cytogenetics of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remains imprecise. The introduction of novel genetic and epigenetic markers has helped to close this gap and increased the specificity of risk stratification, although most studies have been conducted in specific AML subpopulations. In order to overcome this limitation, we used a genome-wide approach in multipl...

Myelodysplastic syndromes are a collection of clonal hematopoietic disorders with a wide range of clinical manifestations and eventual outcomes. Accurate prediction of a patient's prognosis is useful to define the risk posed by the disease and which treatment options are most appropriate. Several models have been created to help predict the prognosis for patients with myelodysplastic syndromes....

BACKGROUND Secondary myeloid neoplasms comprise a group of diseases arising after chemotherapy, radiation, immunosuppressive therapy or from aplastic anemia. Few studies have addressed prognostic factors in these neoplasms. METHOD Forty-two patients diagnosed from 1987 to 2008 with secondary myeloid neoplasms were retrospectively evaluated concerning clinical, biochemical, peripheral blood, b...