Clinical and Laboratory Characteristics of Patients with Leukaemia in South-South Nigeria

Background: South-South geopolitical region of Nigeria is a region rich with oil exploration activities. The people in this region are exposed to petroleum products which is one of the factors associated with leukaemia. There are limited data on leukaemia among these people. This study sought to document the clinical and laboratory characteristics of patients with leukaemia from this region. Materials and methods: One hundred and sixty-three (163) case notes of patients from this region with the diagnosis of leukaemia over a ten-year period (January 1999 to December 2008) were reviewed. Clinical and laboratory profiles of the patients were extracted and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 15.Results: Leukaemia was found to be more common in males (52.1%) than in females (47.9%). The mean ages at diagnosis of the various subtypes of leukaemia were noted as follows: Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) 4.4±2.3 years, acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) 25.6±3.3 years, chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) 35.2±2.8 years and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) 57.1±4.3. The mean duration of symptoms prior to presentation was found to be shortest (0.5 month) in AML and longest (11.5 months) in CLL. Weakness (82.2%) was found to be the most frequent symptom. This was followed by fever (78.5%), weight loss (54.6%), and bone pain (31.9%). The most common physical signs were pallor (71.2%), splenomegaly (66.3%), and hepatomegaly (47.8%). Haematocrit was found to be reduced below the reference ranges in all the leukaemias but the reduction was more in the acute leukaemias than in the chronic leukaemias. Total white cell count was moderately elevated in the acute leukaemias but markedly increased in the chronic leukaemias. Male patients had higher haematocrit, white cell count, and platelet count at presentation than the female patients. Conclusion: The clinical and laboratory features of the patients from this study were similar to what have been reported widely in literature, but the patients in our study presented late and had shorter median survival compared to their counterpart in the developed world.