Leukemia – Different from Other Cancer Types

Transcript

As a liquid cancer of the blood cells, leukemia never exists in only one place. It is usually all over the body, but confined within blood vessels and bone marrow. This is unlike cancers of solid organs, such as the lungs or colon, that tend to exist in distinct places within the body. This is why surgery plays no role in the management of this disease. This is also why typical cancer staging such as stage one, being a single localized site, and stage four, being metastatic, is also not relevant to leukemia. Rather, we use molecular classifications to give estimates on overall prognosis.