[Acute leukaemias with myelofibrosis. Clinical, cytohistological and evolutive aspects. Their place among malignant blood diseases with myelofibrosis (author's transl)].

In a series of 154 patients with acute leukaemia (AL), 31 had myelofibrosis. The authors report in detail on 9 of these and demonstrate the distinctive features of this form of AL: pancytopenia is severe, circulating blast cells are rare, myelograms are difficult to read, and bone-marrow biopsies are necessary to the diagnosis, severity assessment and prognosis of the disease. Owing to the small number of cells, it is uneasy to distinguish these AL from acute myelofibrosis (a nosological entity which needs to be more precisely defined) and from megakaryoblastic leukaemias, recently individualized.