International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | April 2016 | Vol 4 | Issue 4 Page 1115 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Singh G et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2016 Apr;4(4):1115-1118 www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Research Article Spectrum of acute and chronic leukemia at a tertiary care hospital, Haryana, India Gajender Singh, Padam Parmar*, Sant Prakash Kataria, Sunita Singh, Rajeev Sen INTRODUCTION Malignant proliferation of haematopoietic cells (leukemia) constitutes major proportion of haematopoietic neoplasms worldwide. Leukemias are classified into myeloid and lymphoid subtype. 1 Typing of leukemia is essential for effective therapy because prognosis and survival rate are different for each type and sub-type. 2 Leukemia are of two types; acute and chronic. Acute leukemias are; acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). In childhood, ALL is most common type than AML. In India, the incidence of ALL and AML are 35% and 15% of all hematological malignancies respectively. Chronic leukemias are classified into chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and chronic lypmphocytic leukemia (CLL). 3,4 ABSTRACT Background: Leukemias are primary neoplasms arising from the malignant proliferations of blood cells or their precursors. Leukemias are classified into acute/chronic myeloid and lymphoid subtype. Typing of leukemia is essential for effective therapy because prognosis and survival rate are different for each type and sub-type. Methods: A total of 356 patients diagnosed to have acute/chronic leukemia were included in our study. Only newly diagnosed cases were included in this study and patients on cancer treatment and other primary hematological malignancies like lymphomas, plasma cells disorders and metastatic deposits were excluded. Findings of bone marrow aspiration and peripheral blood were interpreted in respect to history and clinical examination. FAB classification of acute leukemia was applied for sub-typing. Results: In our study, 66.8% of patients had acute leukemia while 33.2% had chronic leukemia. Overall male preponderance was found comprising 56.46% of all cases. Male to female ratio was 1.5:1. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were found in 29.7% and 37.3% of the patients respectively. Of chronic type leukemia, 28.3% patients had chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and only 4.7% had chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). L2 was the most common (49.2%) subtype in ALL, followed by L1 (43.3%). AML sub-typing revealed M3 was the most common (50%), followed by M2 (28.7%). Adult patients (70.5%) were more commonly affected than children (29.5%). In paediatric patients ALL was the predominant diagnosis (65.71%), whereas in adult AML cases were maximum (77.27%). Conclusions: Detailed hematological analysis including peripheral blood and bone marrow aspiration smears examination with cytogentic analysis are necessary for early and definite diagnosis and effective management of hematological malignancies. Keywords: Leukemias, Acute/chronic myeloid and lymphoid subtype Department of Pathology, Pt BD Sharma, PGIMS, Rohtak, Haryana, India Received: 01 February 2016 Accepted: 01 March 2016 *Correspondence: Dr. Padam Parmar, E-mail: drpadamparmar@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20160792