Morphological Characteristics, Immunophenotyping and Cytogenetics in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia Patients at a Tertiary Care Centre, Gujarat, India

ntroduction: Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) is a group of disorders characterised by a spectrum of clinical, morphological, immunophenotypic and associated chromosomal abnormalities. The identification of cytogenetic abnormalities at diagnosis is important for the evaluation of the response to therapy and the identification of an early re-emergence of disease.

Aim: To examine the morphological characteristics of AML and emphasise the role of immunophenotyping and cytogenetics in subtyping AML.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was a prospective study, that was conducted from June 2018 to November 2021 at a tertiary care cancer centre, Department of Oncopathology in Gujarat, India. Following the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 232 patients were diagnosed, with 21 being eliminated owing to the unavailability of samples for cytogenetic testing. Diagnosis of AML was based on morphology of Bone Marrow (BM) aspirates and flow cytometric immunophenotyping. Chromosomal analysis was performed on BM and peripheral blood by using standard cytogenetic technique. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data and calculated in number and percentages.

Results: There were 115 (54.50%) males and 96 (45.49%)females with age group between 1-72 years. The most common subtype was diagnosed as AML M1. Flow cytometry was done on 178 (84.36%) bone marrow and 33 (15.63%) peripheral blood samples. The CD33, CD13, MPO and CD117 were expressed in the vast majority of AML patient, aberrant expression of CD7and CD19 was seen. Total case 121 (57.34%) had normal karyotypes (the majority of cases), 86 (40.75%) cases had anomalous karyotypes consistent with t (8;21), t (15;17), and Inv16, and 4 (1.89%) cases were non informative.

Conclusion: The study concluded that, flow cytometry and cytogenetics should be performed routinely in all cases of AML. A multimodal diagnostic approach combining cytomorphology, multiparametric flow cytometry, accompanied by cytogenetic is needed to arrive at definitive diagnosis of AML.