Acute leukemias — which are incredibly rare — are the most rapidly progressing cancer we know of. The white cells in the blood grow very quickly, over a matter of days to weeks. Sometimes a patient with acute leukemia has no symptoms or has normal blood work even a few weeks or months before the diagnosis.
By looking at a sample of your blood, your doctor can determine if you have abnormal levels of red or white blood cells or platelets — which may suggest leukemia. A blood test may also show the presence of leukemia cells, though not all types of leukemia cause the leukemia cells to circulate in the blood.
In some cases, your doctor might order bone marrow testing even though your blood tests didn't indicate leukemia. That's because in some types of leukemia, cancer cells stay in the bone marrow and don't circulate in the blood.
How is leukemia diagnosed? A diagnosis of leukemia is usually made by analyzing a patient's blood sample through a complete blood count (CBC) or microscopic evaluation of the blood, or by using flow cytometry.
Aside from leukemia, most cancers cannot be detected in routine blood work, such as a CBC test. However, specific blood tests are designed to identify tumor markers, which are chemicals and proteins that may be found in the blood in higher quantities than normal when cancer is present.
Typically a healthy person has a white blood cell count of about 4,000-11,000. Patients with acute or even chronic leukemia may come in with a white blood cell count up into the 100,000-400,000 range.
If you have leukemia, your blood cells count will likely show higher than usual levels of white blood cells, which include leukemic cells. You may also have lower than usual red blood cell and platelet cell counts. If all three types are low, this is known as pancytopenia.
A high number of abnormal white blood cells, or a very low blood count in the test sample, could indicate leukaemia. If this is the case, you'll be urgently referred to a a specialist in treating blood conditions (haematologist). A haematologist may carry out further tests.
Myelodysplastic syndrome refers to a group of related disorders in which abnormal blood-forming cells develop in the bone marrow. At first, these cells interfere with the production of normal blood cells. Later, these cells may become cancerous, turning into a form of leukemia .
Because many types of leukemia show no obvious symptoms early in the disease, leukemia may be diagnosed incidentally during a physical exam or as a result of routine blood testing.
The signs or symptoms of leukemia may vary depending on whether you have an acute or chronic type of leukemia. Acute leukemia may cause signs and symptoms that are similar to the flu. They come on suddenly within days or weeks. Chronic leukemia often causes only a few symptoms or none at all.
They occur in unusual places – In cases of leukaemia, quite often bruises will appear in places that you wouldn't normally expect, especially; the back, legs, and hands.
What is Leukemia (Blood Cancer)? Leukemia starts in the soft, inner part of the bones (bone marrow), but often moves quickly into the blood. It can then spread to other parts of the body, such as the lymph nodes, spleen, liver, central nervous system and other organs.
Some symptoms, like night sweats, fever, fatigue and achiness, resemble flu-like symptoms. Unlike symptoms of the flu, which generally subside as you get better, leukemia symptoms generally last longer than two weeks, and may include sudden weight loss, bone and joint pain and easy bleeding or bruising.
While the exact cause of leukemia—or any cancer, for that matter—is unknown, there are several risk factors that have been identified, such as radiation exposure, previous cancer treatment and being over the age of 65.
Bone pain can occur in leukemia patients when the bone marrow expands from the accumulation of abnormal white blood cells and may manifest as a sharp pain or a dull pain, depending on the location. The long bones of the legs and arms are the most common location to experience this pain.
The median age of a patient diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is 65 years and older. However, most cases of acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) occur in people under 20 years old. The median age of an ALL patient at diagnosis is 15.
Patients with ALL often present at the time of diagnosis with pancytopenia or bicytopenia but may sometimes have normal peripheral blood cell counts. The platelet series is the earliest and the most consistently decreased series in ALL cases at the time of diagnosis and even at the relapse phase.
So while you may be able to see if you have genetic markers for future cancer development, there's currently no home test available that can tell you whether you have leukemia currently. Possible tests available for home use can give you an idea of your overall health and risk factors, but they can't diagnose leukemia.
If you have leukemia, you'll likely have higher than normal counts of white blood cells.
In CLL, the leukemia cells grow out of control and crowd out normal blood cells. These cells often build up slowly over time. Many people don't have any symptoms for at least a few years. In time, the cells can spread to other parts of the body, including the lymph nodes, liver, and spleen.
CLL does not usually cause any symptoms early on and may only be picked up during a blood test carried out for another reason. When symptoms develop, they may include: getting infections often. anaemia – persistent tiredness, shortness of breath and pale skin.