Treatments for acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Your healthcare team will create a treatment plan just for you. The plan is based on your health and specific information about the cancer. What you want is also important when planning treatment. When deciding which treatments to offer for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), your healthcare team will consider:
- your age
- chromosome or gene changes (also called abnormalities)
- the subtype (or classification) of ALL
- your overall health
- risk group
- possible side effects of treatment
- hormone status
- your initial
white blood cell count - how the cancer responds to treatment
- if the cancer has come back (relapsed or recurred) or spread to the brain and spinal cord (called the
central nervous system , or CNS)
Chemotherapy is the main treatment for ALL. Targeted therapy and radiation therapy are sometimes used to treat ALL as well.
If ALL relapses or doesn't respond to treatment (called refractory ALL), immunotherapy including
It is important to start treatment as soon as ALL is diagnosed. If the cancer recurs, your lifestyle and preferences can help plan further treatment.
Treatment for ALL is different for adults than it is for children. Find out more about treatments for childhood ALL.
Response to treatment
Knowing how well leukemia responds to treatment helps doctors determine your prognosis and plan future care. The goal of treatment is to reach a complete remission.
Complete remission, or complete response, means that the numbers of blood cells (red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets) have returned to normal levels and less than 5% of cells in the bone marrow are immature white blood cells (also called leukemia cells, blast cells or blasts). With a complete remission, there are no general signs or symptoms of ALL and no signs or symptoms that ALL has spread to the CNS or anywhere else in the body.
Minimal residual disease (MRD) means that there are leukemia cells in the bone marrow, but they can only be seen using sensitive tests, such as flow cytometry or polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The leukemia cells can’t be seen with standard tests, such as looking at the cells under a microscope.
Active disease means that leukemia cells are still present during treatment or that the disease comes back (relapses) after treatment. With active disease, more than 5% of cells in the bone marrow are leukemia cells.