MDS-RIGHT partners gathered in Milan to work on updating international MDS guidelines

Update and improvement of the (European) diagnostic and therapeutic guidelines for MDS is one of the six major goals of the MDS-RIGHT project. Existing guidelines are mainly based on expert opinions and retrospective observational data in selected patient groups. The first step will be to redesign and update the existing European recommendation published in 2013 by the European LeukemiaNet (ELN) into an improved, online guideline. New evidence-based information generated by the Work packages of MDS-RIGHT as well as by other MDS researchers will be added during the course of the MDS-RIGHT project. The ambition is to build an interactive version of MDS guidelines, enabling medical specialists to easily consult their specific MDS management topic of interest on a mobile device – like a cell phone or tablet – during patient consultations.

The fifteen MDS-RIGHT partners from 8 European countries and MDS experts gathered in Milan on October 13th and 14th for a Working meeting. The update of the current European recommendations published by Malcovati et al. in Blood 2013, coordinated by prof. Eva Hellstrom-Lindberg, was an important focus during this meeting. Proposals for the update and translation into online guidance, which were drafted by 13 subgroups dedicated to a specific topic prior to the Working meeting, were discussed. Currently, the 13 subgroups of European MDS experts are working to complete the dedicated sections. In parallel, the website team in York is developing the online guidelines and programming the interactive sections. The diagnostic and prognostic sections, as well as the interactive tools for MDS classification and risk scores, should become available online early 2018, and the other sections will follow mid 2018.