5/5/11

How many days leukemia patient have to stay in hospital for Chemo therapy?


How many days leukemia patient have to stay in hospital for Chemo therapy?

- J.S.
It completely depends on the patient, the type and subtype of leukemia and what chemotherapy drugs are being given. Leukemia patients do not stay in the hospital for the whole time they are being treated but they are typically in and out and get to spend some time home as well.

I can't say I know a lot about CLL or CML but I know a little bit about ALL and much more about AML treatment. Patients with ALL go through 3 stages of treatment with 3 types of chemotherapy - remission induction, consolidation, and maintenance. Patients with AML go through only remission induction chemo and consolidation chemo. Remission induction chemotherapy (also called induction chemo) is typically made up of very strong drugs that, as the name suggests, induce remission. Most often only 1 round of induction chemo is required but it may be given 2 or 3 times. Once remission is established, consolidation chemo is a slightly weaker cocktail of chemo drugs or different chemo drugs altogether that have the purpose of destroying the small amounts of cancerous cells that may have not been killed during the induction chemo. I don't know exactly what maintenance chemo is but I believe it is similar to consolidation but again, a different cocktail of drugs that maintains the remission.

My son (who has secondary AML leukemia) stayed in the hospital for 55 days after diagnosis, in that time he had 2 high doses of remission induction chemotherapy as well as a splenectomy surgery. For his third round of chemo he stayed for about 3 weeks. After that he had his first round of consolidation chemotherapy and he was in the hospital for 8 days. Between then and now he had an infection that put him in the hospital on IV antibiotics for several days. He's back now for his 2nd round of consolidation chemo (5th overall) and he's been here since Friday and he'll probably be here for at least another 3-5 days.

- Michael C
You do not mention what type of leukemia you are writing about.The treatment varies greatly from one type to another .I have C L L my treatment started with a week in hospital because I was been given very large doses of steroids for five days and my blood sugars had to be monitored very closely all that time .After that week I only spent a few hours in the hospital once a month to receive a drug intravenously the remaining treatment was in tablet form which i was able to take at home I also has to visit the hospital on two occasions for bone marrow samples to be taken, these visits only take an hour.

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