Haematological Malignancy

Sample Types

Bone Marrow
This is the tissue of choice to investigate patients suspected of having leukaemia or preleukaemic syndromes.

Peripheral Blood
This can be sent if disease cells are present in sufficient numbers to allow cell culture. It is the tissue of choice for investigation of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

Other Tissues
These can be analysed including lymph nodes, spleen, ascitic fluid, CSF and solid tumours.

Sample Prioritisation

Urgent
All new acute leukaemias, chronic myeloid leukaemias and those cases possibly relapsing or transforming will be treated as urgent and will be analysed within one week.

Routine
All non-urgent samples will be analysed as soon as possible, usually within 3 weeks of collection.

In Abeyance
All samples that are not urgent with an uncertain diagnosis will be held in abeyance, pending the morphological report.

This is necessary because at the time of the biopsy the diagnosis may not be known and chromosome analysis may not be required after morphology has been examined.

Clinicians are requested to cooperate as fully as possible with this policy. This is to avoid unnecessary and labour intensive analytical work.