Even though the exact diagnosis of any disease is done by proper investigation, one can assume the disease they have only by concentrating on the symptoms he/she has. Considering leukaemias, there are many subtypes. The 2 major broad categories of leukaemias are acute and chronic leukaemias.
What are the symptoms of acute leukaemia? What are things that you will or experience if you have acute leukaemia?
The symptoms that patient have are the same regardless of the subtype of the disease. They all are attributing to the inadequate blood cell production in the bone marrow. The blood cell production becomes less as the abnormally proliferating cells infiltrate the surrounding bone marrow.
1. Symptoms of anaemia – Red blood cells are produce by the bone marrow. In leukaemia red blood cell production is reduced giving rise to anaemia(less haemoglobin in blood).
a. Feeling of weakness
b. Becoming breathless on effort
c. Exercise tiredness
2. Symptoms of leucopenia (reduced white blood cells in blood) –
a. Recurrent infection – If you are getting more diseases than usual that means your immunity has reduced. The major cells that are involved in immunity are white blood cells. In leukaemia the number of normally functioning white blood cells reduces giving rise to leucopenia. So, you may have cold, fever and other infectious diseases more often than usual.
3. Thrombocytopenia (reduced thrombocytes in the blood)- Thrombocytes or the platelets are another constituent of blood. They are also produced in the bone marrow. These are important in blood clotting. They are also reduced in leukaemia and cause bleeding disorders. So, you may have gum bleeding, etc.
4. Symptoms due to marrow infiltration – The proliferating cells infiltrate in to the marrow. This causes bone pain. The patient may feel pain in their limbs and joints.
Above are the symptoms you may have. But there are more signs, you may have indicting leukaemia, but you should observe carefully to detect these symptoms. They are listed below.
1. Pallor – This is seen in the eyes. To see it you have to pull the lower eyelid downwards and see the conjunctiva. It should be bright pinkish closer to red in colour. It becomes pallor when the colour becomes pale and closer to whitish colour.
2. Fever – You can measure your temperature by a thermometer. There are thermometers in most of the houses these days. If the reading is higher than 370 C, your are having fever. This is due to increase activity of the abnormally proliferating cells. This results in increased basal metabolic rate in leukaemic individuals.
3. Petechiaea, purpura, bruises – look carefully in your skin and look for bruises which may result from bleeding in to the skin.
4. Lymphadenopathy (enlargement of the lymph nodes) – to detect these you should know where the lymph nodes are and how to palpate for them. I will discuss about the method in a later article.
5. Hepatosplenomegally – the method of observing will be discussed later.
No comments:
Post a Comment