Visceral leishmaniasis among children presenting with pancytopenia

Background: Pancytopenia can result from either a failure of production of hematopoietic progenitors or peripheral destruction of a cellular element either due to infection, immune-mediated damage or hypersplenism. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), one of the chronic parasitic diseases in the world that affects millions of people recently, leishmaniasis has been seen with increasing frequency in patients with Pancytopenia.Objective: To determine the frequency of visceral leishmaniasis among children presenting with pancytopenia at Pediatric Department, Azzd Jammu and Kashmir Medical College MuzaffarabadMethodology This cross sectional study was conducted at the Department of paeds SKBZ/ CMH, Muzaffarabad. The study duration was 6 months from June 2018 to December 2018. All children with pancytopenia either of gender were enrolled. After taking informed demographic information, all the cases underwent bone marrow sampling to assess the Visceral Leishmaniasis. All the data was collected by self-made proforma.Results: Total 75 patients were studied; their mean age of patients was 6.74±3.14 years. Males were in majority 67.69% and 32.31% were females. Leishmaniasis was found 15.38% of the cases. Leishmaniasis was statistically insignificant according to age and gender; p-values were quite insignificant.Conclusion: It is concluded that the visceral leishmaniasis in children with pancytopenia was 15.38%