Synchronous Presence of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia and Breast Cancer in Nigerian Adult Females: Case Series

Synchronous presentation of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) and Breast Cancer (BC) has been reported, but are uncommon. Although studies have revealed that the risk of second primary malignancies (SPMs) developing in patients with CLL is twice that of general population, it was also noted that concomitant SPMs in untreated BC are very rare1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 . Studies have also shown that early diagnosis and appropriate management of malignancies are central to patients’ treatment outcome (better quality of life and overall survival) and very poor prognosis and treatment outcome for patients presenting with advanced stage (stage IV) cancers1 , 2 , 3 , 6 , 7 .Synchronous presentation of CLL and BC, to the best of our knowledge, has not been previously reported in our environment. In this report, we describe our observation of two female patients diagnosed with synchronous primary CLL and BC. This raised a series of diagnostic, etiological and therapeutic issues in a resource poor setting like Nigeria, persuading us to report these rare findings.