Blood cancer red flags you should take seriously - including repeat symptom
Charities are urging Scots to familiarise themselves with the symptoms of leukaemia, which remains little understood despite being one of the deadliest forms of cancer.
Around 10,000 Brits are diagnosed with leukaemia every year. It is a form of blood cancer that kills more people than prostate cancer or breast cancer and has a survival rate of just 50 percent. It comes as two new drugs to treat blood cancer have been newly approved by the NHS in Scotland, giving sufferers hope.
The condition can be easy to spot, with its most common symptoms including fatigue, bruising, unusual bleeding and repeated infections. But despite this, alarming new research from Leukaemia UK has found that only 14 percent of Brits know the warning signs of the illness.
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Because of the lack of awareness surrounding the disease, it is often diagnosed too late. In fact, 37 percent of leukaemia diagnoses happen in A&E once patients' symptoms have become acute, and 5,000 people die as a result of the cancer each year, according to Leukaemia UK.
Leukaemia is a blood cancer that originates in the bone marrow and creates abnormal blood cells - usually white ones. These abnormal cells are not fully developed, leaving sufferers with too few, too many, or faulty blood cells.
There are many different forms of the disease, depending on the type of blood cell affected and how quickly the condition progresses. However, these types of leukaemia share some common signs such as aching joints, shortness of breath, swollen lymph nodes and unexplained weight loss.
Experts point to repeat infections as the most common sign of leukaemia, but a recent survey by Leukaemia Care and Leukaemia UK found that only nine percent of Scots associated this complaint with the disease. Fatigue, bruising, and unusual bleeding are also indicators of the disease, but 48 percent of Scots were unaware that any of these symptoms could signal cancer.
More information is available on the Spot Leukaemia website.
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