RATIONALE: Gathering information about quality of life, fatigue, and other symptoms from patients with myelodysplastic syndromes may help doctors learn more about the disease and may help plan treatment.

PURPOSE: This clinical trial is studying quality of life and symptoms in patients with newly diagnosed myelodysplastic syndromes.

This study will ultimately aim at providing the scientific community with additional patient-reported health status data to support and further facilitate the clinical decision-making process. This project has thus a number of goals. The main objective of the protocol is to improve our understanding of the possible added prognostic value of patients' judgment on their own health status and its potential clinical implications. This would aim at providing clinicians with an easy and brief to administer patient-reported health status scale or tool to be used to make more informed treatment decisions. In addition, along with other recent evidence (also looking at the prognostic value of patients' health status judgment in MDS patients), the data of this research could possibly serve to devise a patient-based prognostic index to be used in this higher risk population.

Inclusion criteria

• Patients with newly diagnosed myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) according to WHO classification with any known IPSS risk score category. The initial diagnosis of MDS is acceptable within 3 months before date of registration.
• Having a full baseline QoL Evaluation completed (i.e. EORTC QLQ-C30; EQ5D; FACIT-Fatigue and Control Preference Scale).
• Adult patients (≥ 18 years old).
• Written informed consent provided.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients who have received prior treatment other than platelets or RBC transfusions, iron chelation, antibiotic/virostatic drugs, vitamins;
• Patients with therapy related MDS.
• Having any kind of psychiatric disorder or major cognitive dysfunction.
• Not able to read and understand local language.

Adult patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).