Background: Peripheral pancytopenia is not a disease by itself; rather it describes simultaneous presence of\nanemia, leucopenia and thrombocytopenia resulting from a number of disease processes. Only a few systematic\nstudies have been published on the topic of pancytopenia, although extensive studies have been done for its\ndifferent etiological factors like aplastic anemia, megaloblastic anemia, leukemia, etc. Thus, this study was carried\nout to investigate for and to identify the causes of pancytopenia, to find out the frequency of different causes, to\ndetermine the incidence of pancytopenia in relation to sex and age and to compare our findings with those of\nother similar studies from this part of the world.\nMethods: This was a prospective study conducted in the Department of Pathology of a teaching institute and a\ntertiary care hospital in southern Maharashtra, India, over a period of two years. All the patients referred to the\ncentral clinical laboratory for routine complete blood count (CBC) and peripheral smear (PS) examination, from\nboth - the outpatient and the inpatient departments, were screened for pancytopenia. Of these, a total number of\n250 cases that fulfilled the diagnostic criteria were selected.\nDetailed hematological investigations followed by bone marrow aspiration wherever indicated and possible were\nperformed according to standard methods to ascertain the causes of pancytopenia.\nResults: A definite male preponderance was observed, the male to female ratio being 2.6 : 1. The majority of cases\nwere encountered in 3rd and 4th decades. Hypersplenism (29.2%), Infections (25.6%), Myelosuppressants (16.8%)\nand Megaloblastosis (13.2%) were the four most common causes in this large series on pancytopenia from a single\ncentre in India.\nConclusion: Detailed clinical history and meticulous physical examination along with baseline hematological\ninvestigations, provides invaluable information in the complete workup of pancytopenic patients, helping in\nsystematic planning of further investigations to diagnose and ascertain the cause, avoiding a battery of unnecessary\ntests.
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