Your doctor considers these factors to determine the best treatment plan for you:
- Your symptoms
- Your age
- Which subtype of MDS you have
- Your IPSS (International Prognostic Scoring System) disease risk score
- Other serious conditions or diseases you have
- Whether someone is willing and able to donate matching bone marrow to you (preferably a family member)
Treatments for Myelodysplastic Syndromes have a variety of goals. They may:
- Help healthy cells mature
- Increase the number of healthy cells in your blood
- Kill abnormal bone marrow cells
- Reduce the number of blasts (young white blood cells) in your bone marrow that have an abnormal shape, size, or appearance.
There are 6 general approaches to the treatment of MDS depending on the type you have and the severity of your case:
- Wait and watch, which might be suggested if your blood counts are not too low and your symptoms are not too bad
- Supportive care to help you manage the symptoms of your MDS
- Drug Therapy with medicines specifically approved to treat MDS and stop abnormal cells from growing
- Immunosuppressive therapy, which can lower your body's immune response
- Chemotherapy, using drugs that kill abnormal cells
- Bone marrow transplantation to replace damaged bone marrow stem cells with healthy ones
Wait and Watch
Your doctor might suggest the wait and watch approach, also called watchful waiting, if your blood counts are not too low and your symptoms are not too bad. In this approach, your doctor will monitor your blood counts and bone marrow to see how they change over time. As blood counts go lower and bone marrow blast counts rise, your doctor will discuss other treatment options.
Therapies
Bone Marrow Transplant
Clinical Trials