Treatment of leukemia in children
Leukemia is the type of cancer that most frequently occurs in children and adolescents, and its treatment can be diverse.
The childhood leukemia is cancer that affects a greater percentage of children and adolescents in the world, but increasingly there are more treatments available for the disease to get a recession it and the absolute cure.
This type of cancer affects the blood, especially the white blood cells that make it up . These white blood cells, formed in the bone marrow of our body, are in charge of fighting all the diseases and infections that attack us, but in the case of children with leukemia, these white blood cells are abnormal and affect healthy ones that already exist. in the body, making it difficult for them to work on our body.
There are two general types of leukemia, depending on the growth of the disease. On the one hand, there is chronic leukemia, which progresses slowly, and on the other, acute leukemia, which has a faster growth. This is the most common in childhood cases.
The leukemia child is a type of cancer that eventually produce another series of secondary diseases, through which we can reach the point of origin, ie these diseases or infections are what make us symptoms to find out what is going. An example of this can be loss of appetite, fatigue, anemia or excessive bleeding if there has been a cut.
If we find a case of childhood leukemia in our family, we should not be alarmed and let the pediatric oncology professionals work to do a study of the disease, which will determine the treatment to follow. This will depend on the age and body of the child, as well as the type of leukemia and the stage of the disease.
Index
CHEMOTHERAPY
The chemotherapy is best known treatment against cancer and in the case of childhood leukemia is one of the most used. In this case, it is about the administration of medications to children that can be carried out by various routes: oral, intravenous and intrathecal . In the case of intrathecal administration, one of the most common, the drug is injected through the cerebrospinal fluid, which is the one that surrounds the brain and bone marrow, source from which the white blood cells that are causing the problem arise. and therefore source of cancer. This is a clear type of treatment to achieve remission of the disease, and it has a high success rate.
In the event that the disease is completely eliminated, children have to continue attending maintenance chemotherapy sessions for two or three years after discharge from the disease to prevent it from reproducing again.
Chemotherapy, being a supply of high-potency chemical drugs, can have adverse effects such as weight loss and hair loss , something very visually alarming for the parents and relatives of children, but which has no consequences in the future from the moment the treatment ends. In addition, to avoid other health problems that chemotherapy can produce in the shortest long term, all cancer patients are routinely followed up with studies and clinical trials.
RADIOTHERAPY
On the contrary, radiotherapy is a less invasive treatment due to the side effects that it can produce in children. It involves high-powered X-ray radiation to directly destroy cancer cells in the body or at least prevent them from growing. In some cases of more advanced childhood leukemia, both treatments have had to be interspersed. Radiation therapy can also be carried out in several ways: by means of an X-ray machine that irradiates them directly to the exact point in the body where the cancer cells are found, or by injecting a radioactive substance at the exact site. In childhood leukemia, it is more common to use the first type of radiation therapy.
STEM CELL TRANSPLANTATION
Finally, there is the treatment of a donor bone marrow transplant. When children with leukemia are receiving chemotherapy but this is not enough since the number of abnormal white blood cells is much higher than that of healthy ones, this type of treatment is carried out. This consists of extracting the stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow and leaving them frozen while the patient receives chemotherapy treatment. Once finished, these white blood cells, which are still immature as stem cells, are injected into the patient, thus increasing the creation of healthy white blood cells in the patient’s body.
All these treatments are being improved with the passage of time and with the clinical studies that are carried out in the area of research on childhood cancer, with an increasing number of children who are able to fight the disease.
Dr. Tabriella Perivolaris, Sara's mother and fan of fashion, beauty, motherhood, among others, about the female universe. Since 2018 she has been working as a copywriter, always bringing to her articles a little of her experience and experience as a mother and woman.
