Clinicohaematological Study of Pancytopenia in a Tertiary Care Centre-One Year Experience

Pancytopenia is reduction in all three lineages of haematopoietic cells. The etiology varies widely in patients; ranging from transient marrow suppression as in viral fever to a manifestation of underlying serious or life threatening disease as leukaemia. Knowing the exact etiology is important for specific treatment and prognostication.

To evaluate the etiological and clinico-hematological profile in patients of pancytopenia in our tertiary care hospital of North India.

This is a cross-sectional comparative prospective study conducted over a period of one year (June 2014 to June 2015) in the department of Pathology, SMS&R Greater Noida. The detailed clinical history, physical examination and hematological parameters including bone marrow aspirate and biopsy of pancytopenic patients at presentation were recorded. In 51 cases of pancytopenia bone marrow aspirate and in 9 cases bone marrow biopsies were done.

There were 74 cases of pancytopenia. The most common cause in our study was megaloblastic anaemia (30 cases) followed by mixed nutritional anaemia (14 cases). The other causes in descending order of occurrence were iron deficiency anemia (4 cases), dengue infection (4 cases), multiple myeloma and metastatic carcinoma (2 cases each). The less common causes include tropical splenomegaly, myelodysplastic syndrome, non Hodgkin lymphoma, aleukemic leukaemia, hemophagocytosis, leishmaniasis and ITP with one case of each.

Pancytopenia is one of the most common hematological problem encountered in routine clinical practice. A proper work up with routine clinical information, routine hematological parameter bone marrow study and other relevant studies and thus help in early diagnosis and proper management.