Clinico-pathological profile of pancytopenia patients in a single health care centre of northern India

Abstract

Background: Pancytopenia is a clinical outcome of various pathological conditions ranging from bone marrow suppression, bone marrow infiltration, infections, hypersplenism, haemolysis, and haematological malignancies. As such is the most common cause in drug induced (chemotherapy) bone marrow suppression. As most of these patients first contact their primary care physicians, a quick workup will resolve many diagnosis and can give a hint towards a life threatening condition too. Material and Methods: We included all patients admitted with pancytopenia at our tertiary care centre except those who were drug induced. They were evaluated and given appropriate treatment. Results: We observed 73 patients in a year, after excluding drug-induced pancytopenia, and showed aplastic anaemia was the foremost cause (31.5%) followed by vitamin B12 deficiency (19.2%), infections (13.7%), hypersplenism and haematological malignancies. Conclusion: Majority of adult patients admitted with pancytopenia are diagnosed to have curable cause like vitamin deficiency and infections but significant number was also of aplastic anaemia, a condition that requires specialist care.

Keywords

• aplastic anaemia
• chronic liver disease
• haemolytic anaemia
• megaloblastic anaemia
• pancytopenia