Leukemia: Basic Knowledge about Treatment Options

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Introduction

Leukemia is a disease affecting the bone marrow and other associated organs with the tendency to form blood. It is a disease which is malignant in nature and causes the blood forming organs to produce massive numbers of abnormal or immature leukocytes, which are white blood cells, fundamentally. The abnormal nature of the disease suppresses the normal production of other cells leading to more chronic diseases such as anemia.

In an overview of the prevalence rate of leukemia, researchers have identified that on a general scale, out of the entire population of a country which may be cited in billions approximately 143 individuals are diagnosed with leukemia every single day. Out of those 143 individuals, approximately 66 people lose the battle against cancer and suffer through death. If the incidence rate of leukemia is analyzed, in the year of 2011, the incidence rate of leukemia in the United States of America was 5.3 in over 100,000 people. These statistics were obtained with a scale of investigation which kept the age as a standardized factor (World Health Rankings, 2011).

Leukemia is a disease which affects individuals of all ages and gender. It is not a gender specific disease and effects males and females alike. Leukemia can present in people of all races though it is the main type of cancer which causes deaths in adults below the age of 20 years and in children. While leukemia is not an age specific or race specific disease, studies have shown that the incidence of leukemia is more prominent among Hispanic adolescents and Hispanic children in comparison to the non-Hispanic population. Furthermore, the five year survival rate of individuals suffering from leukemia is approximately 8% lower among the African-American tribes when analyzed in comparison with the white race.

Treatment Options

There are four fundamental forms of treatment of leukemia that include;

1. Chemotherapy
2. Antibody therapy
3. Radiation therapy
4. Blood and bone marrow transplant

Out of these four treatment options, chemotherapy is the most widely used technique and its use is dependent on the type of leukemia the patient suffers from. Some forms of leukemia and the stage at which they are diagnosed can be treated with the use of a single drug to treat the cancer but in more severe cases in which the cancer has progressed to complicated stages, a combination of chemotherapeutic drugs may be used to treat the patient.

Radiation therapy, on the other hand, is often administered in combination with chemotherapy. Radiation therapy may be administered as total-body irradiation or upon a specific area of the body in cases where the cancer is limited to one region of the body. Total-body irradiation therapy is utilized when patients are being prepared for bone marrow transplants.

In the procedure of blood and marrow transplant, the defective bone marrow of the individual is eradicated and removed through the use of chemotherapeutic drugs and extensive radiation therapy. This is, then followed, by donating healthy and stable bone marrow to the patient which may be acquired from a donor. In some cases, the cancerous bone marrow of the patient may be treated to remove the cancerous cells and then utilized again by the patient. In such examples, the patients need to be kept hospitalized for constant monitoring to eliminate the threat of any infections since the removal of bone marrow compromises the immune system of the body.