How to treat Leukemia

Total Views: 211 views Leukemia is a familiar blood cancer. Both adult and children can be affected by it.  Blood work, a bone marrow biopsy and other analysis are applied to identify the nature and type of leukemia. These factors plus the patient’s age decide that how to treat leukemia?

Steps:

Generally chemotherapy is used to treat Leukemia.  Although different types of chemotherapy medications are seen but a combination of them is usually applied.  Medication may be administered by mouth, injection, or intravenously. If leukemia cells are in the spinal fluid, chemotherapy will be administered directly into the fluid.

If intravenous chemotherapy is required to treat Leukemia for a longer period of time then a port will be inserted under the skin.  This process is used to avoid the need for repeated needle sticks. As a result patients get relief from pain.

Another way is to go through the induction stage of chemotherapy.  In this case, a combination of medication is applied to kill the leukemia cells and put the patient in remission.

Next step is to Start consolidation. The second stage of chemotherapy for leukemia is targeted at killing any remaining cells, even if they are not identified in the bone marrow or blood work.

Take radiation therapy. Based on the intensity of the leukemia, radiation may be applied to kill remaining cancer cells or to wipe out a patient’s bone marrow before a stem cell transplant. Radiation is often used as a palliative treatment. It can be applied to reduce the size of an enlarged spleen or lymph nodes, which cause discomfort.

Think about a stem cell transplant. This sort of medication is applied when cancer does not response to chemotherapy. It is also used when a patient has relapsed, which indicates that the cancer has returned. Two types of stem cells transplants are mostly used. One uses a patient’s own stem cells. The other type of transplant uses cells from a matched donor.

Apply biological or specific therapy. Some kinds of chemotherapy treatments only kill the cancer cells and leave the healthy cells. These types of chemotherapy are called as targeted therapy. Biological therapy helps the immune system to discover cancer cells and demolish them.

Get the medication through a clinical trial. Clinical trials are used if other types of treatment fail to cure the cancer. Clinical trials have several criteria that must be followed by the patients in order to get proper medication.  Clinical trials can be located through the treating oncologist, the National Cancer Institute and large teaching hospitals.

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