Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast. My name is Tom, and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about myelodysplastic syndrome.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic, you can follow along at zero definals.com slash myelodysplastic syndrome,

or in the hematology section of the zero definals medicine book.

So let's get straight into it.

Milo dysplastic syndrome is caused by the myeloid bone marrow cells not maturing properly

and therefore not producing healthy blood cells.

So remember that healthy blood cells are created from

bone marrow stem cells and there's a particular myeloid bone marrow cell that is ultimately

responsible for creating red blood cells, neutrophils and megacaryocytes that produce platelets.

And in myelodysplastic syndrome, these bone marrow stem cells

don't mature properly and therefore don't produce enough of these end products. There's a number of

specific types of myelodysplastic syndrome. And we won't go through them all, you just need to be

aware that there's one overarching myelodysplastic syndrome.

It causes low levels of blood components that originate from the myeloid cell line. So this is

anemia, neutropenia, which is a low neutrophil count, and thrombocytopinia, which is a low platelet

count. It's more common in patients over the age of 60 years and in patients who have previously had

treatment with chemotherapy or radiotherapy which might have damaged the bone marrow.

There's an increased risk of transforming into acute myeloid leukemia when patients have

myelidysplastic syndrome.

So how does it present? Well patients may be asymptomatic or incidentally diagnosed when they have myelodysplastic syndrome. So how does it present? Well, patients may be asymptomatic

or incidentally diagnosed when they have a routine full blood count and are found to be low in

hemoglobin or low in neutrophils. They can also present with symptoms of the underlying

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