When you have leukemia or other blood cancers, it’s important to receive expert care that’s personalized for your type of cancer and delivered with compassion. That’s what you get at Baptist Health Miami Cancer Institute. We customize blood cancer care to your specific needs and offer the most advanced treatments.
Special diagnostic techniques help us provide the most accurate diagnosis — often down to the subtype — by revealing blood cell counts, genetic and molecular abnormalities, and bone marrow changes. Our physicians use the information gathered during your diagnostic tests and develop a treatment plan tailored for your condition.
Blood cancer occurs when cells in your blood grow abnormally and multiply, preventing the cells from functioning normally.
Leukemia is, perhaps, the best known of these diseases. It describes a group of blood cancers that affect leukocytes (white blood cells). These cancers begin in the bone marrow, where blood cells are made, but can affect other parts of the lymphatic system, too.
Leukemia occurs when genetic information (DNA) in white blood cells is altered or destroyed. This causes your body to produce dysfunctional white blood cells that take over your bone marrow. This eventually affects the body’s ability to produce healthy white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets.
Though pediatric leukemia is the most common type of cancer in children and teens, most types of leukemia affect adults.
Other blood cancers include:
Leukemia may develop quickly (acute leukemia) or slowly (chronic leukemia). It can also affect different types of white blood cells.
The most common types of leukemia are:
Other types of blood cancers that are similar to leukemia include myeloproliferative diseases and systemic mastocytosis. Myeloproliferative diseases happen when the body makes too many white blood cells, red blood cells or platelets. Systemic mastocytosis occurs when a type of white blood cell called a mast cell builds up in internal tissues and organs.
Overall, people with leukemia are more than two-thirds as likely as those without the disease to be alive five years after their diagnosis, according to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Talking with your physician is the best way to learn about survival rates and what they mean for you. Physicians and researchers also continue to look for new treatments to improve leukemia care and outcomes.
The main risk factor for leukemia is exposure to high levels of radiation or certain chemicals. Other risk factors include:
Physicians don’t yet know if there is a way to prevent leukemia. It’s not possible to prevent it by avoiding risk factors – you can develop the condition with no known risk factors, or you can have risk factors and never develop the disease.
Our cancer specialists at Baptist Health Miami Cancer Institute expertly combine the best of clinical research with the best of patient care to deliver your best outcomes.
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