Staging
Staging is a process that tells a doctor if the cancer has spread and if it has, how far. Since leukemia is in the bone marrow and blood throughout the body, the staging system for solid tumors is not useful. Instead, we create risk categories based on different characteristics of the patient and the leukemia.
Risk Stratification
For childhood ALL, doctors use risk groups instead of stages to describe the extent of the cancer and to help plan treatment:
The doctor may also take the following factors into consideration when planning treatment of childhood ALL:
- Whether the leukemia started from B lymphocytes or T lymphocytes.
- Whether there are changes in chromosomes of the leukemia cells.
- Whether the leukemia responds quickly to therapy.
- Whether the leukemia has invaded the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord or spinal fluid).
For childhood AML, patients are placed into risk categories based on changes in the chromosomes or other molecular changes in the leukemia cells and how they respond to chemotherapy.
