M Akbar Malik, Muhammad Javed Asif, Zafar Iqbal, Sajid Maqbool.
Six Year Experience of 116 Leukemic Children at Shaikh Zayed Hospital Lahore Pakistan.
Proceeding Shaikh Zayed Postgrad Med Inst Jan ;14(1):13-8.

To evaluate prevalence of childhood leukaemia according to FAB classification and its clinical manifestations at tertiary level referral teaching hospital. We retrospectively identified children with diagnosis of childhood leukaemia. They were classified according to FAB morphological classification. At the time of presentation symptomotology and physical findings of these patients were recorded and analysed. A total of 116 patients were diagnosed as childhood (age < 15 years) leukaemia, of these 110 (94.8%) had acute leukaemia (AL) and 6 children had chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). Out of these 116 leukaemic children, 81 (70%) were males and 35 (30%) were females, with a male/female ratio of 2:3. Out of the 110 AL patients, 76 (69.1%) had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and 32 (29.1%) were suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) with ALL/AML ratio of 2.37, according to FAB-classification of AL. Two patient had bilineal morphology. Among ALLs L1 (63.2%) and L2 (34.2%) were the commonest sub-types, whereas M2 (50%) was commonest sub type of AML. The median ages for boys and girls were 6 years and 5 years for ALL, and these were 8 years and 10 years for AML respectively. In symptomatology, fever (65%) pallor (53%), gum bleeding (24%) swellings of body (20%) and discolouration of skin (20%) were the predominant complaints. On physical examination pallor (88%), hyperpyrexia (64%), hepatomegaly (60%), splenomegaly (56%) and cervical lymph -adenopathy (38%) were the commonst signs at the time of presentation. Among acute leukemias ALL is most prevalent. Fever, pallor and gum bleeding are most frequent complaints, whereas, anaemia, hyperpyrexia and hepatomegaly are the commonst signs in leukaemic children.

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