28/04/2024
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), peripheral smear.
90% of CLL cases occur in patients over 50 years of age. Patients tend to survive for a very long time (5-20 years), and unlike CML, there is no blast crisis and they usually die of some other infection.
Its main hallmark is absolute lymphocytosis, and the lymphocytes have very clumpy chromatin that makes them look like soccer balls (alternatively, they all just break and you get a slide full of smudge cells).
