Clinico-hematological analysis of Pancytopenia in Pediatric patients of tertiary care hospital

Introduction: Pancytopenia is condition in which there is reduction of all the 3 peripheral blood lineage and must be suspected on clinical grounds when a patient presents with unexplained pallor. Careful examination of a blood film is important if reason for the pancytopenia is not apparent from the clinical history. If this does not reveal the cause, bone marrow aspiration and trephine may be needed. Aim: To study the profile of pancytopenia in hospitalized children. Materials and methods: This retrospective study was carried out in Dhiraj General Hospital from January 2014 to December 2014. All the Pediatric patients were included for the study. Complete blood count, peripheral smear (PS), bone marrow aspiration and bone marrow trephine biopsy were performed. Results: Among 200 studied Pediatric cases, maximum number of patients (39%) was in the age group of 6 month to 5 years. In the present study, megaloblastic anemia (26.5%) was the most common cause of pancytopenia followed by Aplastic anemia (20.0%) while leukemia was found in 17.5% of cases. The most common symptom was pallor in 163 (81.5%) cases and fever in 130 (65%). Conclusion: The megaloblastic anemia is most common cause of pancytopenia in our study followed by aplastic anemia and acute leukemia.