what is agressive lukemeia?

Question

I need to know the survial rate if diagnosed with agressive lukemeia and how long do they hang on,had a very dear loved one diagnosed with it recently

Answer 1

Leukemia is generally divided into an Acute or a Chronic form. If you are describing something that is "Aggressive", I would have to assume that it is either an Acute Leukemia, or a Chronic Leukemia that is in an accelerated, blast-phase or one that has undergone Transformation to an Acute form.

As a previous poster points out Acute Leukemia comes in 2 forms, Acute Myelogenous (or Myeloid) Leukemia (AML), or Acute Lymphoid Leukemia (ALL). Chronic Leukemia also comes in 2 forms: Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML), or Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia (CLL).

For your sake I'll stick to the AML or ALL. AML tend to occur in older patients (median age= 68), ALL tends to be in children. Depending on the age of the patient, and other characteristics of their leukemia such as cytogenetics and the exact type, the survival rates vary. In general, ALL is very curable in young patients, while the outcome is poorer in older ones, although still tremendously responsive to chemotherapy. AML if it has favorable characteristics, long term cure rates can be up to 50%, while poor risks may be below 20%. How long they survive really depends on how they respond to chemotherapy, and a specific time should never be pinned on a patient's life, especially at the beginnings of the diagnosis, as we never know for sure how short or how long a patient has.

Check out the SEERs database for statistics on various forms of cancer.

Answer 2

As the previous poster pointed out, type of leukemia is important to answer the question, but medically my first inclination would be to assume that you are referring either to CLL, or to AML. The main reason I would assume this is because ALL afflicts primarily children and has fairly good cure rates, and CML has a great prognosis now thanks to the advent of Gleevec.

So, if you are referring to AML, then aggressive would denote that a type of testing called cytogenics indicated that the chromosomes of the cancer cells are associated with particularly poor outcomes. Even if this is the case, first-line chemo and then a bone-marrow transplant are still viable options. Only after it relapsed would this person's options become limited to either clinical trials and palliative care. Depending on the progression of the disease, if it is AML, then the prognosis for at least 6-12 months if not more is a pretty good bet with appropriate treatment. If it relapses though, time will be extremely limited and clinical trials or palliative care should be seriously considered.

On the other hand, if it is CLL, this disease is basically incurable, but on the bright side, it has a very slow progression. So slow, in fact, that people have been known to go years and even decades living normal lives sans treatment. A lot of people potentally could have this disease and not even know it if their blood is not routinely tested. However, once CLL progresses to a point where it causes symptoms then time is probably close to running out. Treatments can help to some extent, but the disease is ultimately incurable.

I'm sorry to hear your loved one was diagnosed with leukemia, and best of luck with treatments.

Answer 3

Which kind of leukemia and is it an adult or child? As I understand it, there are 4 types of leukemia. - ALL, AML, CLL, CML . All can be agressive. Survival rate varies on all sorts of factors. We have a family friend who had leukemia with only a 25 - 30% survival rate. She was only able to do Chemo because they couldn't find a bone marrow match for her. She's done fine so far and is now cancer free.
Good luck to your loved one!

Answer 4

You may want to read How to Prevent and Treat Cancer with Natural Medicine by Mike Murray, and Beating Cancer With Nutrition by Pat Quillen for a lot of info and good advice for dealing with this awful disease.
Good luck!

Answer 5

Actually, the aggressive forms respond better to treatment than the slower growing forms.
Please check this site for info:
http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/hm_lls
Best wishes to you!