Can A Person Survive Leukemia Without Treatment?
Leukemia (meaning white blood, adapted from the Greek) is the clinical name of a group of cancers that affect the cells in the bone marrow that produce blood, resulting in an over production of abnormal cells.
Survival without treatment depends on not only individual personal health situation, but also on the type of leukemia that they are suffering from.
There are two main types of leukemia commonly diagnosed: Acute leukemia, which develops extremely quickly and chronic leukemia, which tends to develop far more slowly.
Acute forms of leukemia develop when young immature cells in the body called blasts develop abnormally. When functioning properly blasts divide to form either lymphocytic or myelogenous blood cells. When the cells are abnormal they continue to divide but do not mature as they should and do not function correctly. Instead they rapidly increase in number and impede the function of healthy blood cells.
When discussing acute leukemia it can be further divided into two different types – lymphocytic or myelogenous. (depending on which types of blood cells have been affected by the abnormal cells)
Acute lymphocytic leukemia is a disease that can be found in both children and adults, but two thirds of the cases diagnosed annually are in children and lymphocytic leukemia accounts for roughly half of all the diagnosed cases of childhood leukemia. Acut myelogenous leukemia on the other hand is more of an adult disease, with only 10% of the cases diagnosed being found in children.
Both forms of acute leukemia develop and progress very rapidly and immediate treatment is crucial to the patient’s chances of survival. Initial treatment usually includes a course of chemotherapy, which may be followed by a bone marrow transplant if the patient’s condition warrants it. The survival rate after such treatment varies but for children the rates of remission have increased significantly over the years. However, if a patient with acute leukemia is not treated promptly, their chances of surviving with the disease for more than a few months are slim.
Chronic leukemia is rather different, and as its name suggests the condition is rarely cured, but it has become manageable with the implementation of effective drug therapies. In chronic leukemia it is mature blood cells that become abnormal. They too begin to build up in the blood but as they have some level of functionality they cause fewer symptoms than are seen in acute leukemia. A patient may have chronic leukemia for a long time without relaxing they are ill. In fact often a diagnosis does not come until the patient seeks help for another medical condition and is subject say to routine blood tests. A person who afflicted with chronic leukemia may survive for several years without treatment but that varies from individual to individual.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
My husband had leukemia for over 20 years. He was 81 when he died. He did not have treatment and it was the last 2 weeks in the hospital that he failed. He was active and kept busy all the time.