Diagnosing ALL begins with a medical history and physical examination, complete blood count, and blood smears. Because the symptoms are so general, many other diseases with similar symptoms must be excluded. Typically, the higher the white blood cell count, the worse the prognosis.
Blast cells are seen on blood smear in 90% of cases. A bone marrow biopsy is conclusive proof of ALL. A spinal tap will tell if the spinal column and brain has been invaded.
Pathological examination, cytogenetics (particularly the presence of Philadelphia chromosome) and immunophenotyping, establish whether the "blast" cells began from the B lymphocytes or T lymphocytes. DNA testing can establish how aggressive the disease is; different mutations have been associated with shorter or longer survival.
Medical imaging (such as ultrasound or CT scanning) can find invasion of other organs commonly the lung, liver, spleen, lymph nodes, brain, kidneys and reproductive organs.
Further Reading
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article on
"Acute lymphoblastic leukemia"
All material adapted used from Wikipedia is available under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Wikipedia® itself is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.