Blood Cancer or Leukaemia is a cancer that affects the blood cells in the human body .Blood cancer is caused when the number of white blood cells rapidly increases in the blood. When a person is affected with blood cancer the production of red blood cells is restricted while at the same time the white blood cells production is greater than it should be. When a person is affected with blood cancer or leukaemia, the bone marrow starts producing excess amounts of white blood cells, the excess white blood cells may sometimes not carry out their normal functions, and continue to grow in numbers over crowding the other normal cells. Learn more about blood cancer, symptoms of blood cancer and treatment of blood cancer in this article titled symptoms and treatment of blood cancer
Symptoms and treatment of blood cancer:
In blood cancer or leukemia the cancerous white blood cells move out from the bone marrow and enter the blood stream spreading to the whole body, disrupting the normal functioning of the various parts of the body
Causes of Blood Cancer
Some of the causes of blood cancer can be weak immune system due to immunity suppressant drugs, radiation, or disease. Blood cancer can also be caused by prolonged exposure to benzene or due to genetic disorders.
Symptoms of Blood Cancer
The various symptoms of blood cancer are mentioned here:
• Fatigue & weakness
• Malaise
• Shortness of breath
• Excessive bruising
• Bleeding from the gums and nose
• Frequent infections and fever
• Sudden loss of weight
• Loss of appetite
• swelling of the lymph nodes
• Pain in the stomach, back and bones
• Frequent or easy fractures from minimal trauma
• Disorientation and delirium
• Frequent headaches
• Blurred vision
• Fluid retention & decrease in the amount of urine passed
Treatment of Blood Cancer
There are different methods that are used for the treatment of blood cancer like radio immunotherapy, biological therapy and admistration of various drugs.
Radio immunotherapy is a treatment of blood cancer where an immunotoxin is injected into the patient. The immunotoxin attaches itself to the protein produced by the cancerous cells and then delivers the toxic dose to the cancer cells. This treatment has lesser side effects than other treatment of blood cancer. At times medication called growth factors are also used to in treatment of blood cancer. Growth factors are medications that help your body produce more blood. Biological therapy is also used in treatment of blood cancer. Biological therapy makes use of special immune system cells and proteins to stimulate the body’s immune system to kill cancer cells.
