First APML Blood cancer treated in city of Faridabad
Faridabad: Faridabad: Fourteen year old Vivek has recovered successfully from blood cancer by undergoing treatment at Sarvodaya Hospital & Research Centre, Sector 8, Faridabad. The patient a native of Uttar Pradesh belongs to a poor family and underwent treatment at many hospitals, but gained no relief. Seeing his financial condition, Sarvodaya Hospital provided entire treatment free of cost for the boy.
For the first time in Faridabad , the newly opened ‘Department of Cancer and Bone Marrow Transplant at Sarvodaya Hospital’ headed by Dr Sumant Gupta, Consultant- Medical Oncology and Hemato-oncology treated a 12 year old boy with APML (Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia) with targeted agents and post Induction therapy, the child is now with cured of the lethal disease.
The boy presented to hospital with high grade fever, lung infections and bleeding from nose. He was initially evaluated and diagnosed as blood cancer. At Sarvodaya Hospital his diagnosis was confirmed as APML after bone marrow and molecular testing, the most dreaded of blood cancers. He was stabilized in ICU and started on this special drug therapy without conventional chemotherapy. With 6 weeks of targeted therapy the boy is now healthy with normal bone marrow function. He will require additional oral therapy for a year which can be taken at home with monthly visits to the hospital.
Actually, acute Leukaemia or blood cancers are one of the commonest and most dreaded cancers in children. Recently there has been lots of advances in the treatment of cancers and there are medicines which are targeted agents which differ from usual chemotherapy drugs by not causing hair loss, vomiting or infections, these agents only kill cancer cells not the normal body cells.
Till recently the treatment of blood cancers required intensive chemotherapy which caused severe side effects and life threatening infections. But now for one particular type of blood cancer called APML, which is accompanied with severe infections and bleeding manifestations there is a therapy consisting of targeted agents called as ATRA and Arsenic trioxide which can cure this particular cancer.
