Family Education
The nurse caring for the child with cancer has a significant supportive role in helping the family understand the different therapies, preventing or managing expected side effects or toxic qualities, and watching for late effects of treatment. Education is a constant feature of the nursing role especially in terms of new treatments, experiments, and home care. Fear and stress created by the cancer diagnosis …show more content…
Two forms of leukemias are usually recognized in children. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia and acute myelogenous leukemia. ALL and AML are further subdivided due to confusion and inconsistent classification of leukemias. Chromosome analysis of leukemic cells has become an important tool in the identification and management of patients with ALL in AML. The pathologic and clinical signs of leukemia are caused by invasion and replacement of any tissue of the body with nonfunctional leukemic cells. Highly vascular organs such as the spleen and liver are the worst affected. Although leukemia is an over production of white blood cells most often the WBC count is low. In all types of leukemia, bone marrow production is depressed. The three main difficulties of leukemia are anemia, infection, and bleeding. The sudden, unwanted entry of the bone marrow with leukemic cells slowly weakens the bone. Invasion of the periosteum increases pressure causing extreme pain. Signs and signs of sickness include fever, paleness, tiredness, anorexia, sudden, dangerous bleeding, and bone and joint pain. Marked infiltration enlargement and fibrosis can be seen in the spleen, liver, and lymph glands. The diagnosis of leukemia is made when a child has a minor infection that does not completely disappear. They continue to be pale, irritable, and feverish. Important factors in the outlook for children with ALL are the first white blood cell count, the patient's age of diagnosis, cell-based immunologic subtype, and the child sex. For AML factors connected with a poor outlook include certain problems with genes, a high white blood cell count, and AML developing after myelodysplastic syndrome. Definite cause of leukemia is based on a bone marrow aspiration sample of living tissue for analysis. Treatment of leukemia involves IV and intrathecal chemotherapeutic agents, usually divided into