Beta
356004

Unusual Presentation of Childhood Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia Initially Presented As a Frontal Headache: Case Report

Article

Last updated: 03 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

-

Abstract

A 3-year-old female patient was presented to Ain Shams University Pediatric Hospital (Egypt) with persistent frontal headache. There were no localizing symptoms and virology studies were negative. The child's visual acuity decreased gradually. After extensive medical workup to exclude the common causes of childhood headaches, the patient was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) depending on the flowcytometric analysis of the Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) sample; as the blast cell count in both complete blood count (CBC) and bone marrow (BM) samples were < 20% being decreased due to corticosteroid therapy patient already received initially in an attempt to lower her intracranial tension before her definite diagnosis. The patient received induction, consolidation chemotherapy, and central nervous system (CNS) treatment with intrathecal methotrexate and cranial irradiation. She developed ALL relapse after her first remission, she presented with intracranial hypertension and optic nerve infiltration by leukemic cells followed by systemic relapse. Subsequent surgical intervention, salvage chemoradiotherapy, and further allogeneic stem cell transplantation did not induce disease remission or restore her visual acuity. The delayed initial diagnosis due to the atypical initial presentation of the case, was associated with poor outcome, and the patient died almost one year after her initial diagnosis.  

DOI

10.21608/ejhm.2024.356004

Keywords

headache, intracranial hypertension, acute lymphocytic leukemia, papilledema

Volume

95

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

46984

Issue Date

2024-04-01

Receive Date

2024-05-25

Publish Date

2024-04-01

Page Start

1,948

Page End

1,951

Print ISSN

1687-2002

Online ISSN

2090-7125

Link

https://ejhm.journals.ekb.eg/article_356004.html

Detail API

https://ejhm.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=356004

Order

98

Type

Original Article

Type Code

606

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine

Publication Link

https://ejhm.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Unusual Presentation of Childhood Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia Initially Presented As a Frontal Headache: Case Report

Details

Type

Article

Created At

24 Dec 2024