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The EBMT risk score

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 47, pages 749–756 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

The European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) risk score provides a simple tool to assess instantly chances and risks of hematopoietic SCT(HSCT) for an individual patient pre-transplant. Five factors, age of the patient, stage of the disease, time from diagnosis, donor type and donor recipient gender combination augment risk for an individual patient with increasing score from 0 as best to 7 as worst in an additive way. The score holds for all acquired hematological disorders, for allogeneic and autologous HSCT (score 0–5), is independent of the HSCT technology and is valid for standard or reduced intensity conditioning. Survival is uniformly worse for older patients, transplanted in advanced disease stage after a long-time interval and with a mismatched donor than for younger patients, transplanted soon in early stage with a well matched donor. Additional risk factors such as performance score, CMV serostatus or cytokine polymorphisms improve prediction but to different extents for low or high-risk patients. Comparative assessment of disease risk and global pre-transplant risk should guide decisions for each patient with his/her specific disease between HSCT and a non-transplant approach and replace the traditional ‘donor vs no donor’ with such a risk-adapted individualized strategy.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the great support provided by Helen Baldomero.

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  1. Hematology, University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland

    A Gratwohl

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Correspondence to A Gratwohl.

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Gratwohl, A. The EBMT risk score. Bone Marrow Transplant 47, 749–756 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2011.110

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