Leukemia early detection/screening
.Screening
-Tests and exams used to find a disease, such as cancer, in people who do not have any symptoms
.Early detection
-Using an approach that lets leukemia get diagnosed earlier than otherwise might have occurred.
Can leukemia be found early?
-At this time there are no widely recommended blood tests or other screening exams for leukemia before it starts to cause symptoms.
-[Screening is testing for cancer in people without any symptoms]
-The best way to find this cancer early is prompt attention to the signs and symptoms of this disease.
-Be alert on warning signs
-Some people are known to be at increased risk of leukemia because of certain blood disorders (myelodysplastic syndrome) or inherited disorders (Down syndrome), or because they were treated with certain chemotherapy drugs or radiation.
-Most doctors recommend that these people receive careful, regular medical checkups. They do not usually develop leukemia, but they and their doctors should be familiar with possible symptoms of leukemia.
-The CA 19-9 test is sometimes used during treatment to see if the therapy is working or after treatment to see if the cancer has recurred (come back).
-Another substance, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), can help detect advanced pancreatic cancer in some people. But it isn't sensitive enough to find the cancer early and is not recommended as a screening test.
- Inherited DNA changes are thought to cause as many as 10% of pancreatic cancers.
- Because these inherited cases are sometimes linked with other cancers, determining whether a patient's relatives have an increased risk is not simple.
- Talking to someone with experience in hereditary cancer syndromes such as a genetic counselor, geneticist, or an oncologist is often helpful.
- For people in families at high risk of pancreatic cancer, there are newer tests for detecting early pancreatic cancer that may help.
- One of these is called endoscopic ultrasound
- This test is not used to screen the general public but might be used for someone with a strong family history of pancreatic cancer.
-Using endoscopic ultrasound, doctors have been able to find early, treatable pancreatic cancers in some members of high-risk families.
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