Blood Cancers
State-of-the-art treatment and compassionate care for a wide range of hematologic/blood cancers.
The Blood Cancer specialists at Middlesex Health can provide you with a complete diagnosis and a tailored treatment plan. Our team includes medical oncologists, oncology nurses, cellular therapy specialists, radiation oncologists, and other experienced professionals who get to know you and your personalized care plan.
Treatment
Your treatment plan may include several different treatments.
- Chemotherapy: Your doctor may use these powerful drugs to kill blood cancer cells. Chemo treats cancer and may stop it from spreading. But it also damages healthy cells, which can cause side effects.
- Immunotherapy: Your doctor may harness your immune system to fight blood cancer. It can also give the immune system a boost by changing the chemical environment of your cancer.
- Radiotherapy: Your doctor will direct high doses of radiation at the part of your body where the cancer is. It destroys blood cancer cells and can also help control cancer-related pain.
- Stem cell (bone marrow) transplantation: Your doctor will replace your damaged blood-forming stem cells with healthy stem cells. These stem cells grow into all types of blood cells, including red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.
In addition, through Middlesex Health's partnership with the Mayo Clinic, you may be eligible for clinical trials of the most cutting-edge cancer treatments.
Each treatment comes with side effects, and the side effects of cancer treatment can be complex, so take the time to learn your options. Talk with your care team about the possible long-term effects of each treatment option and how to manage them.
Common Blood Cancers
Acute lymphocytic leukemia occurs when a bone marrow cell develops mutations in its genetic material or DNA. A cell's DNA contains the instructions that tell a cell what to do. Normally, the DNA tells the cell to grow at a set rate and to die at a set time. In acute lymphocytic leukemia, the mutations tell the bone marrow cell to continue growing and dividing.
When this happens, blood cell production becomes out of control. The bone marrow produces immature cells that develop into leukemic white blood cells called lymphoblasts. These abnormal cells are unable to function properly, and they can build up and crowd out healthy cells.
Doctors aren't certain what starts the process that causes chronic lymphocytic leukemia. What's known is that something happens to cause mutations in the DNA of blood-producing cells. A cell's DNA contains the instructions that tell the cell what to do. The changes tell the blood cells to produce abnormal, ineffective lymphocytes.
Beyond being ineffective, these abnormal lymphocytes continue to live and multiply when healthy lymphocytes would die. The abnormal lymphocytes accumulate in the blood and certain organs, where they cause complications. They may crowd healthy cells out of the bone marrow and interfere with blood cell production.
CML causes an increased number of white blood cells in the blood. Chronic myelogenous leukemia happens when something causes changes to the bone marrow cells. It's not clear what starts this process. However, doctors have discovered how it progresses into chronic myelogenous leukemia.
Doctors aren't sure what causes lymphoma. But it begins when a disease-fighting white blood cell called a lymphocyte develops a genetic mutation. The mutation tells the cell to multiply rapidly, causing many diseased lymphocytes that continue multiplying.
The mutation also allows the cells to go on living when other normal cells would die. This causes too many diseased and ineffective lymphocytes in your lymph nodes and causes the lymph nodes, spleen, and liver to swell.
Multiple myeloma is a cancer that forms in a type of white blood cell called a plasma cell. Healthy plasma cells help fight infections by making proteins called antibodies. Antibodies find and attack germs.
In multiple myeloma, cancerous plasma cells build up in bone marrow. In the bone marrow, the cancer cells crowd out healthy blood cells. Rather than make helpful antibodies, the cancer cells make proteins that don't work right. This leads to complications of multiple myeloma.
Myelodysplastic syndromes are a group of disorders caused by blood cells that are poorly formed or don't work properly.
In a healthy person, bone marrow makes new, immature blood cells that mature over time. Myelodysplastic syndromes occur when something disrupts this process so that the blood cells don't mature.
Instead of developing normally, the blood cells die in the bone marrow or just after entering the bloodstream. Over time, there are more immature, defective cells than healthy ones, leading to problems such as fatigue caused by too few healthy red blood cells (anemia), infections caused by too few healthy white blood cells (leukopenia) and bleeding caused by too few blood-clotting platelets (thrombocytopenia).
Connecticut Oncology Group
Patients receiving cancer care at Middlesex Health receive medical oncology services through the Connecticut Oncology Group (COG).
The board-certified medical oncologists, nurses, and technicians at COG provide the most effective, advanced care with warm, personal attention and support for patients and their families. In addition, your medical oncology team will work closely with your other providers and provide access to clinical trials.
Locations
2 Specialty Care Locations
1Middlesex Health Cancer Center, Middletown
536 Saybrook RoadMiddletown, CT 06457
- Mon
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
- Tue
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
- Wed
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
- Thu
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
- Fri
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
860-358-2000
2Middlesex Health Cancer Center, Westbrook
250 Flat Rock PlaceWestbrook, CT 06498
- Mon
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
- Tue
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
- Wed
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
- Thu
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
- Fri
- 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
860-358-2000
