6.14.05
Childhood Leukemia

A diagnosis of childhood leukemia is no longer a death sentence. Because of improved treatment methods, today most young patients survive and lead normal lives.

Nearly 16,000 new cases of childhood leukemia are diagnosed each year. Leukemia is a cancerous growth of the white cells on the blood of the body. As the white cells grow they crowd out the normal cells in the bone marrow says Dr. Daniel Niebrugge, assistant professor of pediatrics at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield. He describes some of the symptoms of childhood leukemia.

SOUND BITE: "Children and adolescents usually come in to the pediatrician or even to the parents by unusual bleeding or bruising. Sometimes, it presents as chronic tiredness, weakness, and sometimes presents as infection that just won’t go away."

Dr. Niebrugge says the causes and risk factors of leukemia are not known. The disease is not inherited and cannot be passed from child to child in school. The most common age group to get leukemia is 2 to 7 years, but infants and teenagers also are diagnosed with it. The prevalence of leukemia has not increased, but the survival rate has improved dramatically in recent years. Today, 80 to 90 percent of patients survive the disease. Dr. Niebrugge explains the reasons for improved survival rates.

SOUND BITE: "Certainly, that's the reason why there's better survivorship, is the chemotherapy. It’s not necessarily new drugs, but better ways of using them, so that we’re using the same medicines, but different dosages, different orders of how we give the medicine, so better survival."

Dr. Niebrugge says today most children with leukemia can have a normal life – go to school and participate in sports and other childhood activities. Any child displaying symptoms of unusual bleeding or bruising should be seen by their pediatrician or primary care physician, who may refer them to a pediatric oncologist for further evaluation and possible treatment.