What is acute myeloid leukemia?
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a rare form of cancer that affects white blood cells created in the bone marrow. Myeloid means "bone marrow" and in this form of cancer begins to produce abnormal or atypical cells. These new cancer cells interfere with normal blood cell production, reducing the production of red and white blood cells and plates.
This form of cancer remains treatment demanding, because only a few patients are strong enough to undergo aggressive chemotherapy used to cure it. Younger patients are likely to have a higher survival rate, but older patients, the population among which the disease is most common, less likely to respond to treatment.
Some conditions are likely to cause acute myeloid leukemia. People with Down syndrome are 10 to 18 times more likely. It is irony that treatment of chemotherapy in other cancer can increase the risk of condition development. Furthermore, radiatio exposure is a common cause and a high number of people who pThey cut atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later created this condition. Several current studies suggest that repeated exposure to chemical benzene can also increase the risk.
The first symptoms of acute myeloid leukemia may not always indicate disease. People can feel as if they had the flu and have sore muscles, feelings of fatigue, fever, loss of appetite and weight loss. Since more abnormal white cells inhibit normal blood cell production, symptoms such as difficult breathing, reduced immunity to disease, frequent infections and small rashes called petechiae may occur.
Often people are not exactly diagnosed until they have a complete blood count (CBC) that shows unusual numbers of all blood cells. When CBC shows lower than a normal number of blood cells, medical professorles can extract a small amount of bone marrow to analyze the types of white blood cells that are abnormallní. This is sometimes unnecessary because abnormal blood cells can be easily found in the bloodstream if the disease is at the late stage.
The treatment has two phases of chemotherapy. The first, called induction phase, includes seven days of continuous intravenous injections of chemo drugs such as cytarabine. The aim is to attack all abnormal white cells and hopefully it will reduce them to levels that cannot be detected.
The second phase of treatment is called treatment or consolidation treatment. Patients who survive the induction phase often are subject to bone marrow transplantation and receive three to five other chemotherapy treatments to kill the remaining cells. Hospitalization is usually essential for both phases of treatment, as infection resistance is very low and high doses of chemotherapy may have adverse effects on the body.
Unfortunately,Acute myeloid leukemia is difficult to treat, with only about 20 to 30% of the healed patients. These statistics may actually be slightly turned off because many olderPatients have decided not to treat this at all when survival is unlikely. This state remains a rare form of cancer, but medical scientists expect an increase in cases because people live longer: the disease most likely affects those who are older and the average age of start is 63.