To Study the Role of Bone Marrow Aspiration in Etiological categorization of Pediatric Pancytopenia

Abstract

Background: Pancytopenia is a Clinico-hematological entity, characterized by a triad of Anemia, leucopenia, and thrombocytopenia. The criterion for defining Pancytopenia is HGB < 9 g/dl: ANC < 1.5 x 109/L and platelet count <100 x 109/L. The main objective of this study is to categorize pediatric pancytopenia’s on etiological basis and to study the age wise incidence.
 Methodology and Results: This is a 5-year study (2016-2021) conducted in tertiary care pediatric referral hospital. All data were expressed as Mean +/ - SD and p value <0.05 is taken as statistically significant. A total of 500 bone marrow smears of pancytopenic patients were studied, of which 60% were boys & 40% girls, 64% constituted Malignant diseases and 36% were benign. Incidence wise, ALL is the most common and pancytopenia being 2nd and together comprises 64% of total cases. Some rare cases like AML –M6 in 2 months old, Chediak higashi syndrome and Familial Hemophagocytic syndrome were noted. Flow cytometry and Molecular genetics were done were ever required.
 Conclusion: Bone Marrow Aspiration is a reliable and sensitive test which can be used in investigation of Pediatric pancytopenia’s and if used meticulously with other routine hematological tests can give a high diagnostic accuracy. ALL is most common in our study (other studies showed Aplastic anemia), AML-M6 in 2 months, LD bodies in bone marrow, HPS were amongst the rare cases