I was scanning thru some cool hematology lectures, and I saw this cool basic principle for leukemia. Many of you probably have known this already, but the not-so-bright me just discovered this today.
As we all know, the four big leukemias are ALL, AML, CLL and CML. Let’s say you’re working in hematology clinic on leukemia day when all leukemic patients come for check up, guess how do you initially diagnose the type of leukemia in patients? The AGE of the patient.
- 0-14 years old – Acute LymphocyticBLASTIC Leukemia (ALL – seen in pediatric hospitals, most responsive to therapy)
- 15-39 years old – Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML – Auer rods)
- 40-60 years old – Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML – Philadelphia chromosome t[9:22] and very low leukocyte alkaline phosphatase LAP score)
- 60 years and older – Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL – nontender lymphadenopathy, hepatosplenomegaly, 50% die of infection related to hypogammaglobulinemia)
Of course there are few exceptions to everything, but overall, it’s about the AGE.
Wait a sec, why am I talking about hematology when my current rotation is dermatology? Because dermatology is depressing!!!! I’d rather fry my brain in ОЛЕЙНА cooking oil than in dermatology…
Ngengengenge kidding! Dermatology is cool! I just can’t get enough out of it! In fact it’s the most challenging and high-yield subject in medicine that I really have to keep up with if I want to be a dermatologist. Some people get high with drugs; I get high with dermatology… ngengengenge 
