How do healthcare providers treat blood cancers?
How do healthcare providers treat blood cancers?
Blood cancer treatment isn’t one-size-fits-all. Some blood cancer types respond well to specific treatments. Some blood cancer treatments have significant side effects. Healthcare providers consider factors, including your age, your overall health, the kind of blood cancer you have and specific treatment side effects, before recommending a treatment plan. Some common treatments for blood cancer include:
- Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy is a primary blood cancer treatment, killing cancer cells to either slow down the disease's progress or eliminate the cancer. Healthcare providers use different drug types for different blood cancers.
- Radiation therapy: Healthcare providers may use radiation to treat leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma. Radiation targets abnormal cells, damaging their DNA so they can’t reproduce. Healthcare providers often combine radiation therapy with other treatments. They may use radiation to ease some symptoms.
- Immunotherapy: This treatment uses your immune system to fight cancer. Immunotherapy may help your body make more immune cells or help your existing immune cells find and kill cancer cells.
- Targeted therapy for cancer: This cancer treatment targets genetic changes or mutations that turn healthy cells into abnormal cells.
- CAR T-cell therapy: In CAR T-cell therapy, healthcare providers turn T-cell lymphocytes — a type of white blood cell — into more effective cancer treatment. Healthcare providers may use CAR T-cell therapy to treat B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, multiple myeloma and several types of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma if other treatments haven’t worked.
- Autologous stem cell transplant: Healthcare providers can collect and store bone marrow stem cells before administering high doses of chemotherapy. Once chemotherapy is done, they’ll replace the protected stem cells. This way, people having autologous stem cell implants can avoid chemotherapy side effects.
- Allogeneic stem cell transplant: Sometimes, damaged bone marrow needs to be replaced with healthy bone marrow. Healthcare providers identify a suitable bone marrow donor and use the donor’s cells to replace your damaged ones. This is an effective but dangerous procedure.