This study was purposed to investigate the cell morphological features of bone marrow and peripheral blood in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome, mainly with refractory anemia, and to compare them with other anemia diseases including chronic aplastic anemia, hemolytic anemia and megaloblastic anemia. The bone marrow and peripheral blood were taken from patients for preparing the smears with Wright staining. 500 karyocytes in bone marrow and 100 karyocytes in peripheral blood were detected, and the features of morbid cells of erythrocyte, granulocyte and megakaryocytic series were observed. The results showed that differences between refractory anemia, chronic aplastic anemias and hemolytic anemia as well as megaloblastic anemia were statistically significant (P < 0.05) in the granules scarce and absence in the intracytoplasm of segmented neutrocyte in peripheral blood, Pelger dyskaryosis, the numbers and detected rate of immature granulocytes, monocyte detected rate, the granules scarce in all stage of granulocytic series in bone marrow, odd number and prolification of nucleolus in erythrocytic series, little macronucleus and single circle nucleus macronucleus. It is concluded that cell morphology is the foundation of diagnosing the MDS, the abnormality morphology both in peripheral blood and bone marrow play the consequence role in the diagnosis of MDS.