Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transplant with high-risk relapse leukemia?

Posted: December 5, 2013 at 9:46 am

Alot of immune system cells (Leukocytes ect.) are stored in the bone marrow of the large bone such as the femur or tibia. Removing the bone marrow from the patient and putting in new "clean" bone marrow "could" help reduce the risk of relapsing. The problem is that cancer cells do not always get flushed out of the system the way that we hope they will, and any residual cells have a chance of surviving and dividing over and over and over and over again which causes the cancer to come back. Certain chemotherapy drugs help prevent cells from dividing, which in theory will run out the life span of a cancer cell and allow it to die before it spawns new cells, however these drugs act on the entire system and are very hard on the body. So getting a bone marrow transplant may dramatically reduce the risk of relapse down to the point of non existence, but could also have not much effect at all and there is no way of knowing (terribly sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear).

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Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transplant with high-risk relapse leukemia?

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