Mobina Ahsan Dodhy, Nusrat Bokhari, Abbas Hayat.
Aetiology of Pancytopenia, A five-year experience.
Ann Pak Inst Med Sci Jan ;1(2):92-5.

Background: Pancytopenia is a serious haematological problem, which makes the patient prone to anaemic manifestations, infections and bleeding tendency. Underlying it are many diseases, which are diagnosed by bone marrow aspiration & trephine biopsy. Study Design and Period of Study: This is a retrospective descriptive study performed at Haematology Department of Rawalpindi General Hospital form April 1999 to April 2004. Aim: The study was carried` out to determine the relative frequencies of various pathological conditions aetiologically related to pancytopenia. Materials and Methods: In all the selected patients (n= 392), peripheral blood counts were performed on a fully automated haematology autoanalyzer. Bone marrow aspiration and whenever required trephine biopsies were performed. Results: Megaloblastic anaemia was the most frequent cause of pancytopenia (35.95%). This was followed by hypersplenism (16.3%), mixed deficiency anaemia (11.2%), and Aplastic anaemia (8.16%). These constituted 71.6% of the total. Myelofibrosis, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, haemophagocytic syndrome, Acute myeloid leukaemia, visceral leishmaniasis, Gaucher`s disease, malaria, non-Hodgkin`s lymphoma, multiple myeloma, PNH, myelodysplastic syndrome-RAEB-t (refractory anaemia with excess blasts in transformation) and lymphoproliferative disorder were found to be the diagnoses in the rest. Conclusions: Megaloblastic anaemia was the commonest cause of pancytopenia followed by hypersplenism, aplastic anemia, myelofibrosis, acute leukemias and hemophagocytic syndrome.

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