Anyone Can Experience It, Recognize Blood Cancer Starting From Symptoms To Handling

JAKARTA - Blood cancer is a type of cancer that can attack anyone, regardless of age, ranging from children to the elderly. This cancer occurs when blood cells experience abnormalities, so they develop and spread quickly throughout the body.

1. Types of blood cancer

Blood cancer consists of several types, such as clothes that attack blood cell formation tissues, including spinal cord and lymph nodes. Leukemia is also divided into several types, namely Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

Based on data from the Indonesian Pediatric Cancer Registry (IPCAR) 2024, ALL contributed 33.19 percent of cases of child blood cancer in Indonesia. Meanwhile, AML generally occurs in adults.

Other types of blood cancer have lymphoma, which comes from lymphatic systems, such as lymph nodes, runoffs, tonnesils, bonelobes, and cucumber glands. Another type is myeloma, blood cancer that comes from plasma cells in the spinal cord.

2. Symptoms of blood cancer

Blood cancer has symptoms that are often considered common diseases, so it tends to be ignored. This makes the treatment of blood cancer late and it is difficult for patients to do treatment.

"Regarding initial signs such as prolonged fever, fatigue that never disappears, repeated flu, pale, or lymph node swelling can accelerate diagnosis. The sooner it is detected, the greater the chance of patients recovering," said Senior Consultant and Haematologist at the Parkway Cancer Center, Dawn Mya Hae, in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, on Wednesday, March 5, 2025.

3. Cause of blood cancer

The cause of blood cancer is not yet known with certainty. However, there are several risk factors that increase a person can catch this disease.

Actually, this blood cancer can be caused by various kinds, environment, viruses, cigarettes, radiation, and other causes. One of the causes is also due to gene mutations, which cause cells that previously worked normally to become abnormal. That's what causes until now you can't confirm what causes it," he explained.

4. Handling blood cancer

Handling blood cancer must be done immediately because the spread of this cancer is very fast and can be fatal if it is late. In the early stages of treatment, patients will usually undergo spinal cord checks and sampling.

"If someone is suspected of blood cancer, he will be tested. Checking the bone cord is the most important thing to be able to check the spread of the cancer," said Doctor Dawn.

"The bone cord sample was taken, carried out several tests, after knowing what type of cancer, an additional test will be carried out, then we can give a diagnosis of this blood cancer," he added.

There are several ways to treat blood cancer, ranging from surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, hormone therapy, and target therapy. There is also CAR-T Cell (Chimeric Antigen Receptor) therapy is a genetically modified treatment of cancer using T cells.

" Chemotherapy is still the backbone of blood cancer treatment. There are other options that we usually combine, namely radiotherapy, immunotherapy, targeted therapy," he said.

5. How to prevent blood cancer

How to prevent blood cancer is not certain, because the exact cause of this cancer is also unknown to date. However, there are several things that can be done to reduce the risk factors of blood cancer, such as adopting a healthy lifestyle.

"Those who can prevent blood cancer do not yet exist, this is one of the challenging diseases. The initial diagnosis will be very helpful for the patient's recovery, by doing healthy lifestyle, exercise," concluded Doctor Dawn.