The Association of Fatal Intracranial Hemorrhage and Blastic Crisis in Patients with Acute Leukemia

Abstract

INTRACRANIAL bleeding is a common cause of death in acute leukemia.^{1 2 3 4 5 6} This often occurs as part of a generalized hemorrhagic diathesis, for which thrombocytopenia usually forms the essential background. This paper discusses another factor, —namely, rapidly rising numbers of abnormal leukocytes in the peripheral blood ("blastic crisis"), —which in a significant proportion of cases appears to be associated with massive intracranial hemorrhage. An abstract of this work has been presented previously.⁷ MethodsOne hundred patients with acute leukemia admitted consecutively to the National Cancer Institute between June, 1954, and March, 1957, were studied. All diagnoses of leukemia were confirmed by . . .