Background: bleeding is a common clinical symptom of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and has prognostic significance. Main cause of bleeding is thrombocytopenia. Purpose: To assess the situation with bleeding symptom (mainly thrombocytopenic purpura) in AML patients. Patients and methods: descriptive study of 58 patients with AML treated in National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion from 1/2010 to 10/2010. Results: Most patients have reduced platelet count (92.8 percent). Overall percentage of thrombocytopenic purpura in AML is 74.1 percent, from which the M3 subtype has highest bleeding percentage (100 percent), following by subtypes M1 (85.7 percent), M4 (8.8 percent), M2 (80.0 percent)
M5 is the subtype with lowest bleeding rate (33.3 percent). Mast common form of bleeding is subcutaneous purpura (53.8 percent)
24.5 percent patients has internal organ bleeding
20.3 percent patients has both subcutaneous and organ bleeding
severity of bleeding symptom correlates with severity of platelet count decrease. Conclusion: thrombocytopenic purpura is a common clinical symptom of AML and severity of bleeding symptom correlates with severity of platelet count decrease.