What Is Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia?
Acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) is a shape of acute leukemia. Leukemia is unopen to other give-and-take for blood cancer. An acute leukemia is a malignant too life-threatening bone marrow disease.
What Causes Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia?
We exercise not know precisely how acute lymphocytic leukemia tin open fire occur. It is known that at that topographic point may sometimes alive a human human relationship with radiations or with certain plenty medications. Especially the drugs used inwards the handling of malignant diseases (cytostatics, for example inwards chemotherapy) may increment the jeopardy of leukemia. In well-nigh cases this is an acute myeloid leukemia.
What Are The Signs And Symptoms Of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia?
In acute lymphocytic leukemia, the symptoms are mainly caused yesteryear the shortage of normal blood cells.
- Anemia is caused yesteryear the shortage of cerise blood cells. This tin open fire exertion complaints of paleness, fatigue too shortness of breath.
- The shortage of white blood cells tin open fire exertion infections too fever.
- The shortage of blood platelets causes bruising too bleeding, such as nosebleeds, paste bleeding or pocket-sized puncture inwards the skin.
Diagnosis
There are certain plenty studies that are performed for complaints that signal leukemia.
Blood test
We bring got a few tubes of blood too examine whether your blood has as good much or a shortage of the different types of blood cells. We also examine whether at that topographic point are leukemic cells (blasts) inwards the blood.
B jail mobile telephone too T cell
Acute lymphocytic leukemia is distinguished into ii major groups: the B-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia too the T-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia. Lymph node enlargement is more than usual inwards the T-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia. The handling of both types of acute lymphocytic leukemia is the same.
Bone Marrow Examination
In a bone marrow puncture, we suck upwards unopen to bone marrow from the sternum or from the back of the pelvis. We enquiry this bone marrow inwards different ways:
- We opinion the cells under a microscope. With this, we tin open fire oftentimes already distinguish between acute lymphatic too acute myeloid leukemia.
- We exercise a flow cytometry. This is a study inwards which we aspect at the proteins on the surface of the leukemic cells. This allows us to precisely multifariousness out which type of lymphatic jail mobile telephone causes the leukemia. The more than accurate the classification, the better we tin open fire guess the prognosis.
- We perform a chromosome test. Some chromosome aberrations affect the prognosis, too sometimes they allow more than targeted treatment.
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Treatment
The handling of acute leukemia is intentionally curative, that is, targeted at the cure of the disease. The handling consists of a combination of different cell-killing drugs (cytostatics), better known as chemotherapy. A destination leukemia handling consists of several courses of chemotherapy.
Specifically for acute lymphocytic leukemia
The handling of acute lymphocytic leukemia differs inwards unopen to points from that of acute myeloid leukemia:
- At all yous testament bring a maintenance handling at the outpatient infirmary for long periods (one too a half to ii years) after chemotherapy.
- At all, the jeopardy of enlargement to the meninges is greater. That is why a handling of the nervous organisation (through spinal punctures) is also required. We bring got fluid from the spinal canal too we examine the leukemic cells inwards this fluid. At the same time, we operate out cancer-killing medications inwards the spinal canal.
