Leukemia (leukemia - leukemia) - a systemic tumor diseases of the blood (hematological malignancies), occurring mainly affecting leukocyte bone marrow.
for all forms of leukemia is characteriz
ed by three main groups of syndromes:
- Infectious - toxic syndrome, mainly manifested in the form of a tendency to various infectious and inflammatory processes due to lower body resistance, impaired immunity processes,
- haemorrhagicsyndrome, manifested bleeding disorders and a tendency toward increased bleeding, bruising, bleeding, and even bleeding (as in the case of hemorrhagic diathesis).
- Anemic syndrome manifested varying degrees of hypoxia in the organs and tissues in the form of paleness of the skin and mucous membranes, dizziness, shortness of breath, fatigue, etc.(As in anemia).
features of acute leukemia
most common form of acute leukemia following: myeloid, monoblastny, promyelocytic, megacaryoblastic, lymphocytic, and undifferentiated erythromyelosis and others.
Acute leukemia is characterized by a succession of phases of development of the disease:
- initial stage often begins with general weakness, a small low grade temperature, the appearance of pain in the muscles, bones and joints, headache, loss of appetite and nausea, emotional instability.
- advanced stages (first attack or relapse) occurs against the backdrop of severe weakness, severe pain in the muscles and bones, fever.The skin and mucous membranes appear unreasonably small hemorrhage, fungal and ulcer-necrotic lesions and reddish nodules and plaques with a tendency to merge.Bleeding gums may experience nasal, gastric, intestinal, uterine, hemorrhoidal bleeding.When lymphocytic leukemia often develop neurological disorders (neuroleukemia) due to inflammation of the nerve roots, the development of meningoencephalitis, an inflammation of the cranial nerves, as well as impaired vision.Remission
- full (with overall normalization condition, the content of blast cells in the bone marrow is not more than 5%, and in the peripheral blood of not) and incomplete (normalization general condition, but the number of blast cells in the bone marrow than 5%).
- Recovery - a complete remission lasting more than 5 years is observed in 50% of patients after intensive treatment.
- relapse of acute leukemia develops in 50% of patients, characterized by the appearance of new lesions not only in the bone marrow, and other organs.With each subsequent relapse prognosis worsens.
- Terminal stage characterized by increasing necrotizing lesions, severe disruption of normal hematopoiesis, the presence of severe complications, lack of effect of the therapy, including cytostatics.
average life expectancy of patients with lymphoblastic lekoykozah half shorter than in myeloid leukemia and is about six months.The cause of death is most often are infectious complications and bleeding.
Features of chronic leukemia
most common form of chronic leukemia following: myeloid and lymphocytic leukemia, multiple myeloma, erythremia, subleukemic myelosis, polycythemia, and others.
- Chronic leukemia at an early stage of its development can be asymptomatic and detected with a blood test for another reason.
- During the clinical manifestations can severely disturb the weakness and sweating, slight fever, and bone pain.Very often, reduced appetite, patients lose weight until exhaustion (cachexia), worried about a feeling of heaviness in the right upper quadrant and in the area of the spleen due to the increase of these bodies and the development of inflammation in them.This stage of the disease when the systemic treatment with cytostatics may take up to 4-5 years or more (it depends on the form of leukemia), without proper treatment - no more than 2-3 years.
- In the terminal stages of chronic leukemia greatly increased spleen and liver, lymph nodes.There are events and progress of cardiovascular failure (shortness of breath, low blood pressure, tachycardia, etc), hemorrhagic syndrome is expressed moderately.In some cases, it is developing hepatitis with jaundice, hepatic failure.Resistance of the body to all kinds of infections is reduced, so often have pneumonia, sore throat, fungal and purulent lesions that can lead to death.
course and outcomes of leukemia
Some types of chronic leukemia (lymphocytic leukemia) may be complicated by the emergence of autoimmune processes that lead to the development of autoimmune hemolytic anemia and thrombocytopenia.In rare cases, possible malignancy (malignancy), enlarged lymph nodes with the development gematosarkomy and severe pain.
benign course of the disease, the timely conduct preventive treatment courses disabled patients can be stored up to 10 years or more.