Anupa Toppo1, Harish Chandra Singh2, Rojalin Nanda3
BACKGROUND
Pancytopenia is a relatively common haematological entity with simultaneous
presence of anaemia, leucopenia and thrombocytopenia. It is a feature of many
medical and haematological disorders like megaloblastic anaemia, drug-induced
bone marrow hypoplasia, even fatal leukaemia and bone marrow aplasia. The
clinical and haematological studies determine the proper diagnosis and
management of patients. Bone marrow examination is an important diagnostic
procedure for determining the cause of pancytopenia. This study was conducted
to evaluate clinico-haematological findings, identify the causes of pancytopenia,
and compare our findings with other similar studies.
METHODS
The four-year retrospective study was carried out in the Department of Pathology
at a tertiary care hospital in western Odisha, India. Data regarding clinical details,
peripheral blood and bone marrow aspirations were collected and analyzed using
simple statistical methods.
RESULTS
A total of 131 cases of pancytopenia were studied. The age range of patients was
3 years to 72 years, with a mean of 36.5 years. Male to female ratio was 0.84 : 1.
The majority of cases were in the age group of 31 – 40 years (20.61 %).
Generalized weakness with pallor (54.96 percent) was the commonest clinical
finding, followed by splenomegaly (16.79 %), and hepatomegaly (11.45 %).
Aplastic anaemia (43.51 %) was the most common cause found on the bone
marrow aspiration followed by megaloblastic anaemia (22.14 %) and
haematological malignancies. Among the haematological malignancies, acute
myeloid leukaemia was the commonest cause of pancytopenia (10.69 %).
CONCLUSIONS
Bone marrow aspiration in cytopenic patients helps in understanding the disease
process and to diagnose or rule out the causes of cytopenia. Different geographical
areas have a different presentation of haematological disorders.
