This report considers the duration of leukemia in children and reports the unusually long survival period of twenty months in an infant aged 19 months at the onset. Unusually long survival in leukemia has been reported several times in the past. The diagnoses in these cases have been qualified by a variety of terms such as "atypical," "subacute" and "chronic." Apparently there is no generally accepted term applied to prolonged leukemia in children.
In 1933, Cooke1 suggested that the term "chronic lymphoid leukemia" be applied to the disease as it typically exists in adults with the usual criteria of prolonged course, excessive splenomegaly, enlargement of lymph nodes and presence in the blood and bone marrow of large numbers of small lymphocytes, but without early thrombopenia, hemorrhagic tendencies or a rapidly developing anemia. He suggested that cases of lymphatic leukemia in children with prolonged survival be considered as variants of