Dr. Diong talks positively about acute leukaemia to a Sri Lankan audience

There is good treatment nowadays for all these types of blood cancers, especially acute leukaemia

Parkway Cancer Centre in Singapore held a press briefing with the participation of the institute’s Haematologist Dr. Colin Phipps Diong on cancer awareness and treatment in Colombo recently.   
Dr. Colin Phipps Diong spent ten years with the Department of Haematology at Singapore General Hospital. He was appointed Lymphoma Director in 2012 and helped build the lymphoma program, later becoming Lymphoma Lead for the SingHealth - DUKE blood cancer centre.   

Dr. Diong started his conversation by discussing about blood cancers such as leukaemia. According to the National Cancer Institute leukaemia is a broad term for cancers of the blood cells. The type of leukaemia depends on the type of blood cell that develops into cancer and whether it grows quickly or slowly.   
“I think everybody knows about acute leukaemia. It’s the most aggressive type of blood cancer. A lot of children also have acute leukaemia. I am not a paediatric doctor, but children also have acute leukaemia. There is good treatment nowadays for all these types of blood cancers, especially acute leukaemia. More than half of the patients with acute leukaemia can be cured,” explained Dr. Diong.   

After stating about this illness he went on to state about the treatments for acute leukaemia. He didn’t forget to provide an explanation regarding chemotherapy.   
“Acute leukaemia can be treated with chemotherapy combined with bone marrow transplantation. I go back to chemotherapy again. Chemotherapy is not targeted. Chemotherapy is a very good treatment, but it kills a lot of fast growing cells in the body. For any cell that grows fast in the body chemotherapy will have an impact on that,” added Dr. Diong.   
He explained about a new targeted therapy beyond this chemotherapy. He stated that this targeted therapy is more efficient.  

“This targeted therapy is called CAR T-Cell therapy. Chimeric Antigen Receptors. These CAR T-Cell therapy basically doesn’t use chemotherapies. This therapy is trying to make your own

immune cell kill the cancer cell directly. This therapy is only approved for treating leukaemia and aggressive lymphoma. There are very few causes for acute leukaemia. One is like very high level of chemical exposure especially to benzene. Benzene is a chemical people who work in petroleum and rubber industry may be get exposed to. So if you know any friends who actually work in oil and gas every three or six months they must take a blood test. Acute leukaemia is a bone marrow cancer. Let us say someone has breast cancer and receive chemotherapy to treat this condition. A few years later a small portion of this patient can have acute leukaemia. Any chemotherapy is a risk factor for acute leukaemia,” explained Dr. Diong.  

He further explained about the causes for the cancer.  
“For lots of cancer types we don’t know the reason. Even for lung cancer smoking is the definite cause. But there are a lot of people who don’t smoke who also get lung cancer. A lot of us don’t know the cause, so for acute leukaemia as well we don’t know the cause,” added Dr. Diong.   
He explained about the symptoms of this cancer. He referred to spontaneous bleeding or getting sick very often and having symptoms like high fever which could be signs of this cancer. Also sweating a lot ‘until your pillow gets wet’ could be a symptom of this acute leukaemia, according to Dr. Diong.