Clinical, hematological and immunophenotypic profile of acute leukemia in a tertiary care centre in south tamilnadu

Objectives: To study clinical, hematological and immunophenotypic profile of 60 cases of de novo acute leukemia at diagnosis.
Materilas and Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of 60 de novo cases of acute leukemia in our institution at a period of three months from June to august of 2018. Diagnosis was based on peripheral blood and bone marrow examination for morphology, cytochemistry and immunophenotypic studies. Statistical analysis was performed by the SPSS software package, version 10.
Results: Among the total of 60 de novo adult leukemia patients, 33 (55%) cases were AML and 27 (45%) cases were ALL. Among the AML cases, 26 (78.8%) were males and 7 (21.2%) were females. Among the ALL cases, 12 (44.4%) were males and 15 (55.6%) were females. The majority of our AML cases presented in the age group of 15-30 years (40.7%). The commonest FAB subtype in our study was AML-M2 at 44.4% followed by AML-M1 at 37%. In both AML and ALL, the most common complaint was fever, 66.7% and 69.7% respectively. The most common feature was lymphadenopathy (78.8%) followed by spleenomegaly (60.6%)
Conclusion: AML is the most common type of leukemia in our study, due to increased referral of cases to our tertiary care centre and also due to good response of ALL cases to treatment, and so they are being admitted less in our hospital. Immunophenotyping is necessary tool for diagnosing and initiating treatment.