title: Prognosis in chronic lymphocytic leukemia: a retrospective multicentric study from the GIMEMA group.
abstract: Clinical and biological data were evaluated using Desu univariate analyses or Cox multivariate analyses in a series of 1,777 chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients from an Italian Cooperative Group. In univariate analyses, age and sex of patients, presence of bone marrow (BM; greater than or equal to 50%), and peripheral blood (PB; greater than or equal to 60,000/microL) lymphocytosis, anemia (hemoglobin [Hb] less than 11 g/dL), thrombocytopenia (less than 100,000/microL), direct Coombs' test positivity, hepatomegaly, splenomegaly, and extent of lymph node involvement were shown to be of significant prognostic value. Multivariate analyses, through a stepwise procedure, showed that the most important prognostic variables are Hb, hepatomegaly, lymph node involvement, PB lymphocytosis, and age and sex of patients. Further covariates would produce an improvement having a nonsignificant P value. Based on the results of multivariate analyses, a four-step staging using the significant variables of the Cox model is proposed.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007945:Leukemia, Lymphoid / Q000097:blood / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011379:Prognosis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013223:Statistics as Topic