Given the fact that there are so many different medical ailments and conditions that can all have a very significant impact on the quality of life we lead, it is important to make sure that you have a basic understanding or even overview about some of them in order to be able to gauge the seriousness of the situation as well as identify the most common symptoms exuded by most conditions when they start to develop in your body. While leukemia is a relatively common term, albeit rather scary, a lot of people scratch their heads and ask themselves ‘what is hair cell leukemia?’ when they hear about the condition for the first time. The condition is a rather uncommon hematological malignancy that is characterized by the accumulation of abnormal B lymphocytes. Just as with leukemia, hair cell leukemia is a type of cancer of the blood that comes about in the case where the bone marrow tends to produce an excessive amount of B cells, otherwise known as white blood cells that are primarily concerned with fighting infection. The condition gets its name from the fact that if you were to look at the cells with the help of microscope, they would appear very hairy as a result of the vili that surrounds their outer layer. Hairy cell leukemia is most commonly encountered in middle aged as well as elderly individuals.
Just as with any medical condition one would need to understand the various hairy cell leukemia symptoms for effective hairy cell leukemia treatment options. This will be a very important aspect of dealing with the condition and ensuring that it does not affect the quality of your life to any significant degree. However, identifying the hairy cell leukemia symptoms is very often one of the biggest problems when it comes to diagnosing the condition. Just as with most cancers, the condition will usually develop under the radar and only come to prominence once it has fully developed – thereby significantly compromising the various treatment options that might have otherwise been available to you were the condition to have been detected at an earlier time. However, in those individuals where the symptoms are rather prominent, some of the very obvious hairy cell leukemia prognosis include frequent infections, tiredness, a loss of weight, a sensation of fullness within the abdomen as well as the presence of a fever and chills. Some individuals may also experience a distinct shortness of breath and the development of lumps around various parts of the body when affected by hairy cell leukemia. However, because of the fact that there is every chance that these symptoms could also easily be the result of some other medical condition – it is extremely important that you make it a point to visit a doctor and have a few medical tests run in order to identify if there is any other underlying medical condition that may be influencing it. This is essential because of the fact that you do not want to spend all you time treating something that will turn out to be nothing more than a symptom.
Despite the fact that it is a form of cancer, hair cell leukemia treatment is very commonly used and quite effective. Treatments for the condition are available in chemotherapy as well as biological forms that make the cancer cells more recognizable to your body’s immune system. Previously, when the condition had progressed to significant levels, doctors would perform surgery in order to remove the spleen. However, thanks to the progress of medical science, in the modern day this is no longer a common practice.