Bone marrow of the every healthy body produces white and red blood cells. The function of white blood cells is to fight infections, while red blood cells are responsible for the transport of oxygen throughout the body. Platelets have a function of clotting the blood. The cancer that affects bone marrow is called leukemia, and in this case, the body produces more white blood cells. The only difference between the white blood cells that are produced due to leukemia is that they don’t have proper function and they don’t stop growing when they are supposed to, so these cells can endanger normal blood cells and cause anemia, bleeding and infections in the body.
Diagnosis
In diagnosing leukemia, the most general division consists of acute and chronic leukemia. In the acute type, the disease is spread very rapidly, while in the chronic type, years may past until symptoms of leukemia in children or adults appear. Leukemia can also be lymphocytic, affecting white blood cell called lymphocytes, and myelogenous, affecting white blood cells called myelocytes. There are four types of leukemia, and the type that affects the children the most is called lymphoblastic leukemia or ALL. Children and adults can also get myelogenous leukemia or AML. CLL in short term is the third type of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type that occurs in the adults over 50 years old and chronic myelogenous leukemia, and there is CML, that mainly develops in adults.
Surgery
Even now, when the medicine has advanced so much, doctors can’t say what causes leukemia, and only the facts about the risk of developing leukemia are known. The main risks of leukemia development are radiation, exposure to chemicals, smoke and Down syndrome. The question that can be posed is why people and children who don’t have these factors of risks suffer from leukemia. The symptoms that may mean that leukemia is in progress are fever, headaches, or pain in joints, but if a person has a lot of bruises and wasn’t hit in that part of the body, it may be a symptom as well. Loss of appetite is yet another symptom, and there are a lot of other symptoms, but we have named the most common. There is a surgical operation that can be done in the case of leukemia. In the cases when the spleen is destroying red blood cells and platelets, a splenectomy operation must be conducted. That is necessary in the case of chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Even though the reasons for leukemia development are still unknown, we hope that in the near future a smaller number of people and children will suffer from this condition.
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