What are the different types ... Video Transcript

Participants

, Carolyn Blasdel RN, Gwen L. Nichols MD

Summary

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a cancer of certain white blood cells. However, CML can also affect red blood cells and clotting cells called &platelets.& Learning about the normal functions of these cells can help you understand what can go wrong and what needs to be monitored.

Webcast Transcript

The three major types of blood cells are white cells, red cells and platelets. CML can have effects on all three blood cell types.

White cells are divided into myeloid cells and lymphoid cells, and chronic myelocytic leukemia or CML affects the myeloid cell line. And so there are subcategories of types of white cells. The ones that we most commonly look at in CML are basophils, and it's common for people with CML to have many basophils, and so your doctor may be monitoring your basophil count.

The red cells are important because they carry oxygen, and the most common problem in people with CML is that they do not have enough red cells to carry oxygen. In other words, you're anemic; this means that you're tired, short of breath and have no energy. This can be measured in either hemoglobin, which will show up on your lab report as Hgb or hematocrit, and hematocrit is a percentage and that means the percentage of red cells compared to the rest of the blood.

And the third major type of blood cell is platelets, and platelets are what make your blood clot so that, if you cut yourself, you don't bleed forever; you quit bleeding. So they're really important and, in CML, you can have too many platelets, which makes your blood too thick; it can cause strokes, for example.

Or you can have not enough platelets and when you have not enough platelets, if you start bleeding, it doesn't stop. So you can see this, if you hit yourself, you get a big bruise or cut your finger, it keeps bleeding. But even more dangerous is if you're bleeding inside somewhere, where it's not easy to put pressure on it to stop the bleeding.