The timing of the diagnosis of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) can depend on many factors, including chance and disease characteristics. This can influence the computation of survival length and can have implications on the assessment of risk at the date of diagnosis. From a series of 635 cases of Ph+ CML, we selected 83 patients with information on blood counts over a period of 36 to 3 months before the diagnosis, and we estimated the time over which a haematologic diagnosis could or should have been anticipated. This time ranged between 24 and 3 months for all cases, and between 13 and 5.5 months for 50 of cases. These values correspond to between 31 and 13 of the median value (42 months) of survival duration that is usually calculated from the date of diagnosis. The length of the diagnostic latency was independent of the assessment of the risk at diagnosis, suggesting that risk definition is not merely a function of an early or of a late diagnosis. The median doubling time of leucocytes from first abnormal count to diagnosis was 4.2 months.
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