Posts Tagged ‘leukemia’
Treatment of Leukemia Cancer
As this type of leukemia is common in patients of advanced age, often in ways not very aggressive and low capacity of treatment to prolong life, it is essential first to decide whether treatment is necessary or not.
It should deal with cases where the disease is active, ie who has anemia or thrombopenia resistant, lymphadenopathy massive or rapid growth, constitutional symptoms or lymphocytosis rapidly progressive.
Patients who are in stage 0 of Rai, the prognosis is very good, they are not usually given any treatment because there is no cure.
These patients often have more than 60 years and what they usually do is carefully monitored. More than half of them live, at least ten years after diagnosis of the disease.
For stages I and II, intermediate risk, no treatment is required immediately if there are no symptoms. When symptoms associated with the disease, use of chemotherapy with chlorambucil or cyclophosphamide, is usually given along with prednisone.
Other medications used are similar to purines, such as fludarabine, which are drugs that interfere with DNA synthesis, producing a selective decrease of T cells and therefore a severe immunosuppression. This medicine, in chronic lymphocytic leukemia, get referrals full or partial in 50% of cases.