Blood Cancer Symptoms In Adults

What is leukemia or blood cancer? What are the symptoms and signs that you can recognize if you are suffering from leukemia as an adult? Who is relatively more likely to develop blood cancer? What are the causes of this type of cancer? How is a doctor diagnosed? Is there anything to do with leukemia and what treatment is there for this sometimes deadly disease? And what are the survival chances when you have or have leukemia?

What is leukemia or blood cancer?
Normally, the body creates white blood cells that help fight infections due to viruses and bacteria and ensure proper wound healing. When someone has leukemia, the bone marrow, instead of white blood cells, causes leukemia cells or cancer cells. These leukemia cells also kill healthy white and other blood cells, which makes you very sick. Leukemia is therefore a very serious form of cancer of the blood cells. When you get leukemia, your chance of dying is quite high when you are not treated properly.

What types of leukemia are there?
There is both chronic leukemia and acute leukemia, which suddenly occurs. When you suffer from chronic leukemia, the disease develops so gradually that there must be no symptoms at all. Only later you will show the typical signs of leukemia. When someone is suffering from acute leukemia, you get sick very quickly and your condition will deteriorate very quickly. Also leukemia can occur from different types of cells such as lymph cells or so-called myelin cells.

Each of the types of leukemia occurs at different ages and has specific symptoms. The chronic types are common in older people, while the acute forms of leukemia also occur in children and adolescents.

What are the symptoms, complaints and signs of leukemia?
Although there may be a large number of complaints with leukemia, there are some symptoms that can specifically indicate blood cancer:

• Suspected lymph nodes without direct pain to the lymph nodes
• Frequent and recurrent infections
• Serious fatigue
• Weight loss or unexplained arrival
• Fever and night sweating
• Blood and inexplicable bruises on the body
• A swollen or painful stomach
• Pain in joints and bones

To diagnose, the doctor will first conduct blood tests, possibly followed by biopsy or bone marrow examination. If necessary, a spinal cord is used to drain some moisture and to investigate in the laboratory.

What are the causes of leukemia?
People exposed to much radiation are more likely to develop leukemia. Also, you will be more likely to have a lot of cancer and especially leukemia in your family. Smoking also increases the risk of blood cancer. That does not mean, at the same time, that when you are at relatively higher risk, you actually develop leukemia. The exact causes of blood cancer are unknown and it is only clear that the disease can be hereditary and that you have a relatively higher chance of getting the disease at certain ages and with certain risk factors.

What does the treatment of leukemia look like?
Depending on the type of leukemia and age, multiple forms of treatment may be chosen. Chemotherapy and radiation are often used, but it can also be attempted to reduce the disease by biological therapy or immunotherapy. Also, transplantation of stem cells (bone marrow transplantation) is a common treatment. In chronic leukemia, it is sometimes not treated at all but can be waited first to see how the disease develops while being regularly monitored.