Prognostic value of tumoral ploidy in a series of Spanish patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia

The prognostic value of tumoral ploidy and its relation with nonrandom chro mosome alterations were analyzed in S9 cases of acute lymphoblastic leukemi a. Ploidy is associated with the number of nonrandom chromosome alterations and survival. The pseudodiploid and hypodiploid groups had ii high inciden ce of nonrandom alterations and poor survival while the diploid and high hy perdiploid groups had a lower incidence of nonrandom alterations and longer survivals. The patients in the low hyperdiploid group with random alterati ons received the same treatment as the diploid and high hyperdiploid groups but had poor survivals. Our analysis confirms that ploidy is a very import ant prognostic factor and suggests that patients with low hyperdiploidy sho uld receive intensive therapies similar to those of patients in the groups with a high number of nonrandom alterations. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.