Abstract
Background: Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a clonal BCR-ABL1-positive myelo-proliferative disorderresulting from an acquired genetic mutation, characterized by the presence of the Philadelphia (Ph) chromosome. CML is associated with significantly high granulocyte numbers in the bone marrow andperipheral blood. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study conducted at the Hematology Unit of King Saud UniversityMedical City aimed to evaluate the incidence and characteristics of CML and the various treatments inSaudi Arabia. We have evaluated the demographic, clinical, and hematological data of 56 consecutivepatients who visited the hospital from Jan 2012 to Jan 2018. Results: The diagnosis and stage of CML were determined based on the World Health Organization criteria, following polymerase chain reaction analysis of bone marrow aspirates. Our study group had equalnumbers of genders with a age mean of 43.3 + 18.1 years. The predominance of younger patients andequal incidence in males and females could be due to the racial and socioeconomic disparities amongour patients compared to those in previous studies. While the most predominant symptom was fatigueand bone pain, the most common clinical sign was hepato-splenomegaly, followed by remarkable weightloss, and epistaxis. Conclusion: A patient with an increased WBC count, abdominal pain, left side distension, and hepatosplenomegaly should clearly be evaluated for CML. (c) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University forHealth Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).