Chronic leukaemias

Chronic Leukaemia, as contrasted to the acute luekemia, are slowly growing clonal malignancies of the hematopoietic system in which, even without active intervention, survival is possible for several years. In the past decade there have been several advances in the basic understanding of these diseases which have lead to improvement in survival of several decades in the majority of patients which is now being referred to as ‘operational cure’. This chapter covers the chronic leukaemias (chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), hairy cell leukaemia, prolymphocytic leukaemia, large granular lymphocytic leukaemia (LGL), and hairy cell leukaemia variant (HCL-v), including epidemiology, staging and diagnosis, molecular biology, pathology, medical management, disease monitoring, management of relapse/refraction, and future directions.