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The Rid System: The Rai System

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The Rai system was originally devised in 1968. Throughout the years the diagnosis of CLL changed, at that time, all that was needed to diagnose CLL was lymphocytosis- a high number of lymphocytes in the blood and bone marrow that didn’t have any other cause (like infection). This was originally defined as over 15,000 lymphocytes/mm3 of blood and at least 40% of the bone marrow being made up of lymphocytes.[9]
Now, in order to examine if a patient has CLL, he must have at least 5,000/mm3 of monoclonal lymphocytes (sometimes called a monoclonal lymphocytosis), but the overall lymphocyte count does not have to be high.
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