Flow cytometry diagnosis of acute leukemia and comparison of cytomorphological diagnosis with Flow cytometry diagnosis

Introduction: Clinical, morphological, immunophenotypic, genetic and molecular characteristics are the most important diagnostic modalities in established diagnosis of acute leukemia. Immuno phenotyping flow cytometry has become a proven valuable tool for precise characterization of acute leukemia. This study was done to see various types of acute leukemia and aberrant antigen expression pattern in acute leukemia in patients and also to compare the results between microscopic morphology and flow cytometry.Materials and Methods: Total number of acute leukemia diagnosed was 103 and of all the age groups. All the new cases reported which were showing atypical cells in peripheral smear and treated cases to find out the minimal residual disease (MRD) were included in this study.Results: When the immune phenotyping of the acute lymphocytic leukemia patterns was done, most of the B-ALL showed positivity for CD79 alpha and HLA-DR followed by other markers and most of the T-ALL showed positivity for CD3 and CD7 markers followed by other markers. When the immune phenotyping patterns of acute myeloid leukemia was done, almost all the cases showed positive for CD13 and varying degrees of positivity with other markers.Conclusion: The flow cytometry immune phenotyping is a powerful tool for accurate diagnosis of acute leukemias and also help in identifying myeloid or lymphoid lineage of these leukemias and has great prognostic and therapeutic implications.