This book, one of a series of Oxford University Press monographs considering epidemiologic methods and the epidemiologic aspects of selected medical conditions, exhaustively and carefully reviews the literature of the past few decades relevant to the occurrence and causes of the leukemias.
This book begins with a discussion of the changing classification schemes and heterogeneity of the leukemias and, throughout the book, separately considers at least four major histologic types: acute lymphocytic, chronic lymphocytic, acute nonlymphocytic (including acute myelocytic), and chronic myelocytic. Subclasses and morphologic variants are considered where information is available. A brief clinical description of each type is included. The second chapter discusses some of the methodologic issues in the epidemiologic investigation of the leukemias. Such problems as defining the time of disease onset, improving inter-rater reliability in histologic interpretation, identifying clusters of these relatively rare conditions, and discerning whether chromosomal abnormalities antedate the disease are raised, but,