Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Research Paper

People hear about the word Leukemia often, yet most people don’t know what this condition is or what it entails. There are several different types and forms of leukemia, and all don’t affect the same people. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer diagnosed in children, with approximately 6000 new cases yearly. This cancer is sudden, dramatic, and it gets worse very quickly without treatment. Although pragmatically for individuals being diagnosed there is a survival rate of 90% in childhood’s ALL.
ALL is a malignant condition, and with children is characterized by too many immature stem cells becoming lymphoblasts, B lymphocytes, or T lymphocytes. These now matured cells are then called leukemia cancer cells, and with an
increased production of these there is less room for the healthy WBC, bone marrow, and platelets. This causes for the body to not work as it’s supposed to due to these cancerous cells building up in bone marrow and spreading into the blood stream and other organs. The risk factors for this disease vary, but some of the most common risks include: X-ray exposure before birth, exposure to radiation, past chemotherapy treatments, certain genetic conditions, and having certain changes in ones genes or chromosomes. Overviewing that list there isn’t many that we can change, although in dentistry there is one thing we can change. The thing we can change is exposure before birth using dental x-rays. There are extenuating circumstances for pregnant individuals who need them, but in most cases they can be avoided till after birth. Therefore inevitably by being aware of this risk we could possibly lower the chance of a child being later diagnosed with ALL. Now most individuals don’t understand the connection between leukemia and dentistry.
A lot of people grow up thinking that their oral health doesn’t relate to their overall health, but research has shown there is many links of oral hygiene and systemic diseases. With there being a connection between the two, sometimes you can discover the first onsets of a disease within someone’s mouth. Specifically how this relates with ALL is that some of its first symptoms show up in the mouth. A huge oral sign of leukemia in children is gingival inflammation, leukopenia induced ulcerations, gingival changes, and recurrent infections. Therefore with these types of symptoms, and gingival changes the dentist can often feel confident with diagnosing this. Although most times the dentist will have patient follow up with their primary doctor to perform further
testing.
Since we know that we cannot change the risk factors very much with leukemia, what can be important to know is; how do we cure this disease?
There are several different ways to help cure leukemia, and some of the ways they use treatment can depend person to person. Although some of the most common treatment forms are Intensive radiotherapy, chemotherapy, blood transfusions, and bone marrow transplants. These different types of cures are very helpful in cure an individual with leukemia, yet they do not come without side effects. With chemotherapy it can cause induced oral ulcerations, which are painful and cause the patient to have many difficulties maintaining their oral health. A thing that has to be assessed is the proceeding dental treatments of patients when they are receiving leukemia treatments. Patients that have leukemia must follow specific protocols, and so this is an area where the dentist and physician need to co-treat
patient.
In conclusion, everyone has a passion in life for something, whether it is good or bad everyone has a passion—something that really cultivates his or her interest. For me, my passion is helping children and teens. I love the chance to share my story, be there for them, help them, and make an impact on them. Therefore my passion for children is how I ended up with the topic I did. A couple weeks ago I was discussing finding a topic for this with my dentist, and he suggested Leukemia. He was discussing how the early onsets of this disease could be shown in the mouth, and that as a hygienist this is something I could pick up on. The fact that we typically spend more time with the patient then the dentist is why picking up on the signs for this disease could be so impactful, and not just for helping the dentist, but for helping the patient