These days, with the advancements made in medical science, figuring out how to treat leukemia is not as daunting a task like it once was. However, this doesn’t mean that treating leukemia is a straightforward process. Learn how to treat leukemia here.
One of the biggest hurdles is that leukemia is a type of cancer that affects a person’s blood cells. This means that cancer can easily spread throughout the body, and doctors can’t simply “cut out” any cancerous tissue. Because of this, doctors usually need to consider a combination of treatments in order to ensure that the patient not only gets cured, but also remains strong and healthy throughout the treatment process.
How to Treat Leukemia: Effective Forms of Treatment
There are a number of different methods that doctors use to treat leukemia. Some of these methods are also used to treat other types of cancer, while others are more specialized to tackle leukemia specifically, such as a bone marrow transplant.
Here are some common ways of how to treat leukemia:
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the primary way to treat leukemia. Incidentally, it’s also one of the most common methods used to treat cancer.
Chemotherapy uses drugs to kill cancer cells. The drugs used in chemotherapy usually come in pill form, or are injected intravenously.
Depending on the type of cancer, a single type or multiple types of drugs might be used. In the case of the latter, this is also known as combination chemotherapy.
Despite being an effective form of treatment, chemotherapy is not without its downsides. This is because the drugs used in chemotherapy can’t tell the difference between healthy cells and cancer cells.
The common side effects of chemotherapy include fatigue, weakness, nausea, dizziness, fever, hair loss, and others. But rest assured, your doctor will be informing you of any possible side effects, and they will give you advice on what you can do to mitigate it.
Radiotherapy
Radiotherapy is a possible method to treat leukemia as well as other cancers. As the name suggests, radiotherapy uses radiation to kill cancer cells.
What the radiation does is it damages the DNA, or genetic material, contained in cancer cells. This prevents cancer cells from multiplying, and eventually, they start to die off.
While radiotherapy isn’t typically used in cases of leukemia, it is used if the cancer cells have spread to other parts of the body, such as the brain, lungs, and kidneys. Just like chemotherapy, it can also cause side effects such as fatigue, weakness, nausea, hair loss, etc.
Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy is a way to treat leukemia that uses the body’s immune system. This takes advantage of chemicals known as immune checkpoint inhibitors, which essentially puts your immune system into overdrive.
Normally, the immune system has checkpoints, which prevent it from attacking the body’s own cells that also includes cancer cells. When a person is given immune checkpoint inhibitors, the immune system is now able to attack cancer cells.
Immunotherapy is also used to prevent a person from relapsing, because it strengthens the body’s protection against future cancer.
