In many cases, unfortunately, people will come back to their cancer doctor with similar symptoms they had at the time of original Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) diagnosis.
“AML when it grows in the bone marrow, it crowds out the good guys,” says Dr. Tara Lin, director of the Acute Leukemia Program, University of Kansas Medical Center.
Read More RELATED: What Are the Treatment Options When Acute Myeloid Leukemia Returns? The symptoms of a relapse may include:
- Increased fatigue including shortness of breath
- Increased bruising due to a low platelet count
- Anemia, due to a low blood count
- Infections, caused by the low number of normal white blood cells to help fight them off.
AML patients who are in remission are carefully monitored to catch a relapse before it causes symptoms, Dr. Lin says. “If I have a patient with AML who's in remission, I will follow their blood counts really closely. And if I see a drop in any of those normal counts, I will be prompted to get a bone-marrow biopsy in order to look for disease relapse, earlier rather than later, before the patient is developing symptoms.”
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Dr. Tara Lin is an Associate Professor of Medicine at The University of Kansas Medical Center. She specializes in acute leukemia and cancer stem cell targeted therapies. Read More