1967 Volume 8 Issue 1 Pages 33-42
Fourty-two cases with leukemia admitted in the First Medical Dept., Hokkaido University Hospital for the past 10 years, were reviewed clinically. 76.3% of them were with acute leukemia.
Family history revealed 24.8% of the cases had one or more patients in their siblings with malignant tumors other than leukemia.
Although main initial symptoms or main complaints were fever, bleeding tendency, and generalized fatigue without regards to the types of leukemia, characteristic symptoms in acute myeloblastic leukemia were anemia and changes in the oral mucosa, in chronic myelocytic leukemia, abdominal tumor and in acute lymphoblastic leukemia, they were lymph node swelling and anemia.
33.8% of the cases with acute myeloblastic leukemia showed leukemic cells more than 90% of the total cells in the peripheral blood, in contrast with chronic myelocytic leukemia in which the leukemic cells occupied less than 30% of the total.
In the bone marrow, the acute type had a tendency showing remarkable increase in cell count and increase in number of the immature cells, than in the chronic type.
Thrombocytopenia was the main cause of bleeding tendency, which was the most frequent complication and the main cause of death.
In the acute myeloblastic leukemia, 50% mortality after combined therapy with steroid and 6 MP was 5.5 months; that was the longest compared with that after other types of therapy.
Mean duration of survival of the patients with acute myeloblastic leukemia in the last 5 years was 5.2 months, which was 3.1 months longer than that in the first 5 years.
In chronic myelocytic leukemia 50% mortality was 15 months, but they were too small in number to be significant satistically.
