Episode 411: An Overview of Myelodysplastic Syndrome for Oncology Nurses

“Not every patient with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is going to progress and die. Only 10%–20% of them will evolve into acute myeloid leukemia. And not all of them need blood transfusions. Some present with low platelet count. It’s not just people who are anemic that have MDS—it’s different depending on what type of MDS they have. These are averages. We’re giving you statistics based on averages, and you’re an individual, so we want to treat you as an individual,” ONS member Sara Tinsley-Vance, PhD, APRN, AOCN^®, nurse practitioner and quality-of-life researcher at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL, told Lenise Taylor, MN, RN, AOCNS^®, TCTCN^™, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, during a conversation about myelodysplastic syndrome.

Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 

Earn 0.5 contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at courses.ons.org by April 17, 2027. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

Learning outcome: Nurses caring for people with myelodysplastic syndrome require knowledge of its pathophysiology, the presenting symptoms, and its diagnosis.

Episode Notes 

• Complete this evaluation for free NCPD. 
• ONS Podcast™ episodes:
  • Episode 339: A Lesson on Labs: How to Monitor and Educate Patients With Cancer
  • Episode 302: Patient Navigation Eliminates Disparities in Cancer Care
  • Episode 256: Cancer Symptom Management Basics: Hematologic Complications
• ONS Voice articles:
  • Manage Cancer-Associated Anemia With Erythropoietin-Stimulating Agents
  • Whole-Genome Sequencing May Guide Treatment Choices for AML and MDS
• Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles: 
  • Deciphering TP53 Mosaic Variants on Germline Biomarker Testing: Implications for Oncology Nurses
  • Myeloid Malignancies: Recognizing the Risk of Germline Predisposition and Supporting Patients and Families
• Oncology Nursing Forum article: Impact of a Hematologic Malignancy Diagnosis and Treatment on Patients and Their Family Caregivers
• ONS book: BMTCN^™ Certification Review Manual (second edition)
• ONS Clinical Practice resource: Genomics Taxonomy
• Genomics and Precision Oncology Learning Library
• American Cancer Society: Myelodysplastic Syndrome Prognostic Scores
• Aplastic Anemia and MDS International Foundation
• Blood Cancer United: MDS Diagnosis
• HealthTree Foundation
• Myelodysplastic Syndromes Foundation: What Is MDS?

To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities. 

To find resources for creating an ONS Podcast club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library.

To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email [e-mail].

Highlights From This Episode

“In the bone marrow maturation process, you have a pluripotent stem cell. You have myeloid and lymphoid, and then on the myeloid side, you make your white blood cells, your red blood cells, and your platelets. And during that maturation process, there’s this problem that arises. It’s called a clonal variation. Or something goes wrong as the cells go through that process year after year. It’s called ineffective hematopoiesis. ... That process of becoming mature, functioning cells, arising from that hematopoietic stem cell is broken, and this leads to low blood counts. Usually, it’s anemia, so the hemoglobin is low. You can see that the mean corpuscular volume (MCV) is really high, and those are clues that a patient might have MDS—anemia with a high MCV.” TS 3:05

“The International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS) was the first way that we staged MDS into lower-risk and higher-risk disease. Now we have the IPSS-R, which is the revised system. And that was intended to be a way of classifying patients into lower-risk or higher-risk disease, where we talked about the goals being different. And it’s really looking at the depth of the cytopenias, so how low are those neutrophils? How low is the hemoglobin and the platelet level? What percentage of blast does the patient have in their bone marrow? [This] gauges whether they have lower-risk or higher-risk disease. And now that we have the Molecular International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS-M), we also take into account the variants that a patient has and that can really change whether you think they have lower-risk or higher-risk disease.” TS 8:46

“During a person’s lifetime, if they were a heavy smoker, we always think of lung cancer, but it can actually predispose a person to MDS. If they worked heavily in chemicals. I can remember more than one patient who worked for pesticide companies. Repeated exposure to these things that can affect our blood cells cumulatively, they can make a person more prone to MDS. Also, patients who have family members who have had bone marrow problems.” TS 13:39

“The way I explain it to patients who say, ‘What does dysplasia mean?’ I say, ‘Well, if you had a picture of a face. If the cell has too many eyes, or one eye above the other or below the other, or too many ears, or they’re just disfigured. They don’t look right and they don’t mature normally.’ And so, the descriptions I frequently see are nuclear budding and micromegakaryocytes. Once you read a lot of the reports, you start to pick out, ‘Okay, these are the terms that go along with dysplastic red blood cells or dysplastic megakaryocytes,’ which are your precursors to platelets.” TS 21:28

“The cytogenetics and the variants—that’s a hard concept to explain to patients. And staying current on how we understand the disease and how it evolves. Now we have pre-MDS states called clonal cytopenia of undetermined significance. That was new to me. And then clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate significance. And some of those clones have other healthcare problems that go along with them.” TS 30:52