Acute Leukaemias in Bauchi State, Northeastern Nigeria: Pattern of Presentations and Clinical Entities

Acute leukaemias are very aggressive diseases that run a rapidly fatal course if not promptly diagnosed and appropriately treated. The clinical presentations range from bone marrow failure such as anaemia, neutropenia or thrombocytopenia to features of organ infiltrations such as lymphadenopathy, splenomegaly, etc, but presentations may be non-specific. Misdiagnosis is very common with delay in diagnosis and prompt treatment being the causes of high morbidity and mortality in acute leukaemias. This study aims to determine the pattern of presentation and various clinical entities of acute leukaemias in Bauchi State, North-Eastern Nigeria.

This was a three year retrospective study in which records of cases of acute leukaemias diagnosed in the Haematology Department of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH) Bauchi from the bone marrow aspiration cytology register from 1st January, 2018 to 31st December, 2020 were collected. Data on socio-demographic characteristics of the patients that include age, gender, diagnosis as well as subtypes of some of the malignancies diagnosed were also collated. The collated data were analyzed using SPSS Version 20.0. A p-value of < 0.05 was considered significant.

Twenty-nine cases of acute leukaemias were diagnosed during the period under review. Majority of cases had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) 19/29 (65.5%) while acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) was seen in 10/29 (34.5%). The mean ± SD age of the patients was 22.2±9.2 years with a range 6 months to 60 years. Males constituted 75.9% (22/29) of the cases of acute leukaemias diagnosed. The male to female ratios for AML and ALL were 2:1 and 2.6:1 respectively. The mean±SD ages for AML and ALL were 27±9.2years and 17.3±11.3 years respectively. The most common form of presentation of acute leukaemia in this study is recurrent anaemia necessitating blood transfusion while proptosis and epistaxis were the least forms of presentation.

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the commonest form of acute leukaemias while recurrent anaemia is the commonest form of clinical presentations in our setting. Early referral of patients with clinical features suggestive of acute leukaemias is recommended.