Leukemia is a disease that affects your blood and bone marrow. It is
not a very common disease, but leukemia can be a very serious and
severe condition. This disease can lead to death and treating your
leukemia case may be painful and hard.
In almost all leukemia cases, the first treatment phase is through
induction chemotherapy. This particular leukemia chemotherapy has the
role of bringing leukemia into remission. This mean that your blood
counts go back to normal and the number of leukemia cells decrease
considerably. This first leukemia treatment phase is can be very
intense and it lasts about one week. Three weeks after this induction
chemotherapy, the patient must take certain drugs in order to recover.
Some of the leukemia patients can also be given extra medication,
depending on what type of leukemia they suffer from and how they have
reacted to treatment. The first time a leukemia patient has this
chemotherapy may not always turn out to be successful. The treatment
may have to be repeated a couple of times over. After this induction
chemotherapy, almost eighty percent of leukemia patients that are under
60 will be cured. The number drops at about 50 percent of all leukemia
patients when it comes to people over 60. If children suffer from
leukemia, then after this treatments more than 90 percent will be cured.
If not all leukemia cells are destroyed after the first chemotherapy
phase, then consolidation chemotherapy is next. This second phase has
as goal destroying the leukemia cells that are left. Large doses of
cytarabine are given to the leukemia patient. This drug may be given in
three cycles, sometimes even more. Many of the people that suffer from
leukemia and get to this point of treatment will eventually be cured.
If neither one of these types of chemotherapy bring remission to the
leukemia patient, than transplant may be his/ her chance. However, a
bone marrow transplant presents some major risks and can have serious
side effects. So, this way of treating leukemia is not used in all
patients and it is only used when chemotherapy shows no effect
whatsoever. Autogeneic or autologous transplant are some other methods
used in cases of leukemia. Both have their risks, but when they are the
only chance left, risk may mean the life of the leukemia patient. It
may also turn out difficult to find a donor in cases of leukemia.
