There is a disease that affects 54,000 people each year and is responsible for about 24,000 deaths. Almost everyone has either known a friend, a family member or an aquaintance that has been affected by this dreadful disease known as Leukemia. This paper is going to inform you on what leukemia is, how to recognize this disease, the side effects on all parts of the body, includ-ing oral effects. Leukemia is a malignant progressive disease, in which the bone marrow and other blood-forming organs produce increased numbers of immature or abnormal leukocytes (white blood cells). There are four common types of leukemia, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Acute Mye-loid Leukemia, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. Acute Lym-phoblastic Leukemia (ALL) affects the lymphoid cells and they grow very quickly. It afflicts more than 6000 people and more than 3,600 will be children and teens. Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) affects the myeloid cells and they grow very quickly also. AML affects 15,000 americans and 8,000 of those will be 65 years or older. Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) affects the mye-lin cells like with AML but instead this type of leukemia grows slow at first. CML affects 6,000 people with 2,900 being 65 and older and only about 170 being children and teens. …show more content…
Men have a 31% greater chance of living with this disease. If that man is african american he is at a 10% higher rate of dying in the next 5 years. For children who come from a Hispanic background, leukemia is the most common cancer that is diagnosed. Leukemia causes more deaths among children than any other childhood cancer, but adults are diagnosed 10 times more than children. In total, 66 people lose their battle with leu-kemia every day. Although leukemia is not preventable, one of five cases of acute myeloid leu-kemia has been directly linked to smoking, so one thing that can be done to try to prevent this disease is to stop