Cancer Cancels Life: Under Staging The Blood Cancer Types

Cancer is one of the most obnoxious life threatening diseases of the world. The name itself is the symbol of pain, hopelessness, suffering and painful death. It is a disease that sucks your soul out of your body so painfully that death seems a better option. There are many kinds of cancers out of these – blood Cancer is one of the types that we will be talking about. There are mainly four blood cancer types. They can be classified into the different types due the origin of the cells that are affected and the course the disease takes.

Blood comprises of Red Blood Cells (RBC) and White Blood Cells (WBC) and Platelets. The RBC’s provide the human body with oxygen and the body is protected by the WBCs and the functionality of the platelets deal with blood clotting at the time when a body faces any kind of injury. Any abnormality in the functionality of these components of blood irrespective of the type of disease results from Blood cancer. Based on the previously mention criteria the four blood cancer types are as follows

• Chronic Myelogenous or Myeloid Leukemias (CML)
• Acute Myelogenous or Myeloid Leukemias (AML)
• Chronic Lymphocytic or Lymphoblastic Leukemias (CLL)
• Acute Lymphocytic or Lymphoblastic Leukemias (ALL)

Chronic Myelogenous or Myeloid Leukemias (CML)

When the bone marrow produces high and uncontrollable number of blood cells – white – before they are leaked in the stream of blood in the body, it is called Chronic Myelogenous or Myeloid Leukemias. One of the common blood cancer types, this variant generally affects adults. The survival rate of this type of blood cancer is around 90 % for 5 years if the anti cancer drug named imatinub or its likes are consumed. A sub type of this blood cancer type is Monocytic leukemia.

Acute Myelogenous or Myeloid Leukemias (AML)

Another variant of blood cancer types, AML is found more in men than in women. It is quite a rare cancer type. This also occurs due to the abnormality in the growth of the number of white blood cells produced by the bone marrow which greatly affects the production of normal production of the other blood components. It is very rarely found in children. The cause of this cancer and the chemotherapy shall ensure a survival rate of 40% up to five years. Some of the sub types of this kind of blood cancer are

• Acute myeloblastic leukemia
• Acute megakaryoblastic leukemia
• Acute promyelocytic leukemia

Chronic Lymphocytic or Lymphoblastic Leukemias (CLL)

This is a critical variant of blood cancer types, since its causes are unknown. It deals with a very slow increase in the number of blood cells produced. These blood cells are a part of the immune system and are involved in producing substances that protect us from organisms that cause any disease. This particular kind of blood cancer affects mostly adults of around 55 years of age. It is found more in men than in women, if a comparison is required then around 1/3 of the affected patients with this disease are women the rest are men. CLL is incurable and the rate of survival for 5 years is 75%. The sub type of this blood cancer type is B-cell Prolymphocytic Leukemia.

Acute Lymphocytic or Lymphoblastic Leukemias (ALL)

This variant of blood cancer types generally is found to affect children between the ages of 2 and 5 and adults of 65 years and above most of the patients of this type of blood cancer around 85% survive this disease with treatments like chemotherapy and radiation.
Generally white blood cells help us protect us against diseases but when blood cancer transforms into a malignant type then the white blood cells are produced in exorbitant rates outnumbering the existing cells that are normal and thus start spreading all over the body parts that are fresh and unaffected. This eventually causes the death of the patient.

Some of the sub types of this disease are:
• Precursor T acute lymphoblastic leukemia
• Burkitt’s leukemia
• Acute biphenotypic leukemia
• Precursor B acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Progression of the disease and the kind of treatment is adopted another criteria for categorizing the blood cancer types namely Acute blood cancer and Chronic Blood Cancer. Where Acute Cancer is generally a form of disease found mostly found in children and requires immediate treatment otherwise this condition spreads to various fresh body parts and become incurable after a time, the Chronic Cancer can affect any person of any age group but it is generally observed in people who are elderly.