Myeloid Disorders

Question 1

What is the difference between bone marrow apsirate and bone marrow trephine?

Answer 1

Aspirate looks at BM cells on blood film

Trephine looks at a core section of bone marrow from a tube needle.

Question 2

What is the difference bteween leukaemia and lymphoma?

Answer 2

Leukaemia = cancer of blood and bone marrow.
Lymphoma = cancer of lymph nodes.

Question 3

What is left shift?

Answer 3

Describes the increasing appearance of immature cells in the blood.

Myeloblast -> promyelocyte -> myelocyte -> band -> neutrophil

The more of the earlier stages we see, the worse the infection/cancer is.

Question 4

What is aplastic anaemia?

Answer 4

Body fails to produce all blood cells in sufficient numbers

Question 5

What is myelodysplasia? What is the risk of this progressing to AML?

Answer 5

Low blood counts, with abnormal looking cells. Risk of progression to AML is high.

Question 6

What are the three lineage specific myeloproliferative disorders?

Answer 6

Over-production of cells, usually along one lineage

Too many red cells = polycythaemia
Too many platelets = thrombocythemia
Too many stromal cells = myelofibrosis

Question 7

What occurs in chronic myeloid leukaemia?

What is used to treat CML?

Answer 7

Raised white celll count with left shift.
CML is driven by mutated BCR-ABL gene.

Imatinib competitively inhibits BCR-ABL protein, preventing tumour cells from proliferating.

Question 8

Which is more common in adults, and in children - AML or ALL?

Answer 8

ALL is 7x more common in children than AML.

AML is far more common in adults than ALL.