Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a hematologic cancer that begins in the bone marrow and results in an overproduction of lymphocytes. It can present as palpable purpura, which is also seen in many other pathologies, including vasculitides such as IgA vasculitis. We present a case of a 52-year-old male who presented to our hospital from an outside facility specifically for plasma exchange for treating a previously diagnosed IgA vasculitis. After being admitted for further evaluation, it was noted that the patient had a diffuse petechial non-blanching purpuric rash bilaterally covering the lower extremities, trunk, upper extremities, and tongue. The patient was also noted to have severe pancytopenia. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) demonstrated the presence of t(9:22), indicating Philadelphia chromosome rearrangement. The patient was diagnosed with ALL. The patient underwent induction chemotherapy and was continued on hyper-CVAD protocol with intrathecal chemotherapy. The patient appeared to respond well to treatment and is currently undergoing subsequent intermittent chemotherapy. In this case, the diagnosis of B-cell ALL (B-ALL) blast crisis was pivotal in providing the correct therapy to this patient, and the case demonstrated that even rare presentations of B-ALL in this population with rare mutations responds avidly to tyrosine kinase inhibitors.
Keywords: acute lymphoblastic leukemia; all; b-all; case report; leukemia diagnosis; philadelphia chromosome; rash.
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