RESUMO
Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia [AML-M3] patients, though amenable to treatment, present with early and sometimes severe bleeding manifestations. In our setup, for various reasons, patients are diagnosed rather late and therefore these bleeding manifestations are a limiting factor in the early and effective treatment of leukemia in such cases. To look into the clinical, peripheral blood and bone marrow features of AML-M3 patients in our setup. A total of 40 consecutive cases of AML-M3 diagnosed on bone marrow biopsy over a period of 10 years were analyzed for clinico-morphological features. Majority of patients [75%] were <30 years of age. The male: female ratio was 3:2. The mean duration of symptoms was 4.2 weeks [Range 1-10 weeks]. Commonest clinical features were fever, pallor and bleeding manifestations. The spleen and liver were variably enlarged in 25% and 45.5% of cases, respectively. The hemoglobin levels ranged from 3.1 to 12.8 g/dl with a mean of 6.6 g/dl. The WBC count ranged from 0.5 to 142 x 10[9]/l with a mean of 28.3 x 10[9]/l. Platelet counts ranged from 5-150 x 10[9]/l with a mean of 28.8 x 10[9]/l. Morphologically 36 patients had hypergranular and 4 had hypogranular promyelocytic leukemia. The features identified in our study can help in early diagnosis of APL, which is known to be extremely important in effective management of patients