Debut of acute leukemia

The debut of acute leukemia has no characteristic clinical manifestations.
For children and young people, a more acute onset is more typical, in which patients are worried about progressive general weakness, malaise, headache, shortness of breath, myalgia, ossalgia, less often – abdominal pain, fever. In mature and advanced age, the disease usually develops more slowly and is characterized by a predominance of symptoms of anemia and intoxication.

More rarely, the first manifestation of acute leukemia (OL) are hemorrhages in the skin, nose bleeds, blood admixture during defecation, mucosal bleeding, hypertrophic gingivitis, and necrotic stomatitis. Finally, in 5% of patients, a diagnosis is made by examining peripheral blood for other diseases.

On examination, most patients determine the paleness of the skin and mucous membranes due to anemia, and manifestations of hemorrhagic syndrome (petechiae and / or ecchymosis on the mucous membranes of the oral cavity and on the skin, signs of internal bleeding are possible). Rarely marked increase in the liver and spleen, lymphadenopathy.

With the developed clinical picture of acute leukemia (OL), the following syndromes are expressed to varying degrees:

1) syndrome of tumor intoxication (weakness, fatigue, weight loss, increase in body temperature, not associated with infection);
2) anemic syndrome (shortness of breath during normal exercise, dizziness, pallor of the skin and mucous membranes);
3) hemorrhagic syndrome (hemorrhage, bleeding mucous membranes, in severe cases – profuse bleeding of various localization, bleeding in the brain);
4) syndrome of leukemic proliferation (ossalgia, swollen lymph nodes, liver, spleen, hypertrophic gingivitis, neuroleukemia);
5) syndrome of infectious complications (local or generalized infections).