Leukemia in children: symptoms, causes and how it is treated
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myeloid leukemia and What is acute myeloid leukemia?
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Leukemia in children: symptoms, causes and how it is treated
What is childhood leukemia? What are its symptoms, causes and how is it treated? Leukemia in children is a blood cancer that unfortunately has a greater incidence in childhood than in adulthood, with about 47 cases diagnosed every million children per year. The comforting fact, however, is that today survival is estimated between 70/80% of diagnosed cases.
Symptoms
The symptoms of childhood leukemia are also characteristic of other childhood diseases:
Pallor
Loss of appetite
Temperature
He retched
Fatigue
Cough
Bleeding or hematomas
Enlargement of the liver, spleen and lymph glands
Bone pain
Swelling
The causes
The causes that lead to childhood leukemia are not yet fully known, but there are risk factors that can increase the probability of development:
Hereditary diseases, such as Down's Syndrome
Immune system syndrome
Brother or sister with leukemia
Exposure to radiation, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or chemicals
It is therefore not possible today to proceed with actual prevention, and the only recommendation is to avoid exposure to radiation or dangerous chemicals.
The diagnosis
Survival of childhood leukemia is greatly influenced by age and when the diagnosis is made. It therefore becomes extremely important to watch over the symptoms without underestimating them, to arrive at a diagnosis as early as possible.
The specialist will make a visit to check for an enlarged liver, spleen and lymph glands, if it detects hemorrhaging and proceed with blood tests to check if there is an increase in white blood cells and a decrease in hemoglobin and platelets.
For a more reliable anamnesis, you can prescribe a bone marrow biopsy and a CSF with a lumbar or spinal puncture.
How to cure
Infantile leukemia can be 3 different types depending on the types of cells affected:
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia: the most common form in pediatric age, affects the cells producing lymphocytes in the bone marrow with a consequent reduction in the blood of the number of red blood cells, platelets and with variations also of white blood cells that can increase or decrease
Acute myeloid leukemia: a form that affects about 20% of the child population, is caused by hematological malignancies different from each other
Chronic myeloid leukemia: the rarest form with a 10% of pediatric cases characterized by hematological neoplasia
The therapy depends on the type of leukemia and other factors, but mainly it is used chemotherapy using anti-cancer drugs taken by mouth, intravenously or through the spinal canal.
In some cases, radiotherapy can be used, often used to prevent the spread of leukemia to other parts of the body.
When leukemia is presented aggressively, the path of bone marrow transplantation is followed, a procedure used to replace the diseased cells with healthy cells taken from a compatible donor, which is generally to be found in the family.
Unfortunately, the possibility of relapses caused by diseased cells that start to proliferate has to be reported.
The therapeutic approach in case of relapse will depend a lot on the time elapsed between the treatments and the new diagnosis, and in the early ones, the most worrying ones, a bone marrow transplant is necessary.
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