 Hi, my name is Dr. Prashan. I am the consultant hematologist and chief of adult hematology division in KMC Hospital in Mangalore. As a hematologist, I deal mainly with blood cancer. One of the most important things in the aspect of cancer is blood cancer. Probably that is the most dreaded cancer that we have ever seen in the mankind's history. So there is a perception that blood cancer is a deadly disease. Of course it is a deadly disease if not treated. But we need to be aware of that because more than 50 to 70% of blood cancers can be treated completely and easily and patient or person can live a healthy life in the future. If we come to blood cancer, per se it is not a single disease. We have several types of cancers which are put together under the bracket of blood cancer. Acute myelodalachemia, acute lymphoidalachemia, lymphomas, again in the lymphomas, aggressive lymphomas, indolent lymphomas, then there is multiple myeloma. There are several types of blood cancers that we know of. Mainly we categorize the blood cancers into an acute blood cancer and a chronic blood cancer. Acute in the sense that these patients present very very urgently, very fast. Within 15 days back the person was doing absolutely fine without any problem. But then 15 days later he has all the problems. A chronic lymphoma or chronic blood cancer basically means it has been there with the patient for several years before we even make a diagnosis of it. And many a times person lives with these chronic blood cancers. Even if we don't offer the immediate treatment they can survive for 6 months, 1 year or even up to 2-3 years without any problem. Whereas acute leukemia or the sudden blood cancer this is something we have to be more vigilant of because if we don't treat the person is going to die 15 days to 30 days time. So how do they present? Most importantly the person presents with an increased fatigue and recurrent fever. Sometimes persons can have swellings in the neck and gum bleeding. There can be bleeding spots in the skin like bluish red patches over the skin. Otherwise there is no specific way wherein we can tell that the moment we see a patient that yes this patient has got blood cancer. Most often it is the blood test which we give us a clue that ok this person may be having a blood cancer because when we do the blood test preliminary blood test shows some abnormal cells in the blood as such they tell that ok he may be having blood cancer. When we suspect a blood cancer we do a test called bone marrow examination wherein we put a small needle inside the hip bone of a person. Now within the hip bone there is a place called bone marrow that is a place where actually our blood is produced. Now we go to that place take some samples and we run investigations on that. There are various investigations that we do like histopathology, flow cytometry, cytogenetics and molecular profiling. With that we confirm the presence or absence of blood cancer. The moment we do a bone marrow it doesn't necessarily mean that yes patient has blood cancer. So doing a bone marrow is not confirmatory of blood cancer that has to be kept in mind because lot of doctors may suggest you to undergo a bone marrow. You should not panic that oh I got a cancer. Bone marrow is not equivalent to blood cancer but once we do a bone marrow we do special tests. Each of the tests I mentioned flow cytometry, cytogenetics, molecular profiling each of them have their own importance and they will help us to make an exact diagnosis of blood cancer exact subtype and also they tell us the exact prognosis in the sense that certain genetic markers genetic abnormalities if you see it translates into a poor prognosis telling that without aggressive treatment like bone marrow transplant person cannot live whereas certain markers genetic markers will tell us use routine chemotherapy that is more than enough patient will be completely cured. You know blood cancer can affect any age group person. There is no certain age group in which blood cancer is always seen. So it becomes extremely crucial to know how much treatment to be given how aggressively the treatment to be given so all these investigations become very important. Coming to chemotherapy probably 20 years, 30 years back it was dismal somebody with the blood cancer hardly lived for more than 2 to 3 years even with the best of the treatment but today it is not like that we have lot of novel treatment options are available as I told in the beginning more than 50 to 70% of blood cancers we completely cure and the person lives for more than 10 to 15 years absolutely normal lifestyle without any problem especially some of the blood cancers they we say that the life expectancy equals to that of a person who doesn't have any cancer. So blood cancer is a type of a cancer where there are high cure rates has to be diagnosed early but we can with the positive thinking with the good approach we can completely cure. One of the most important precipitating factor we see is exposure to smoking and the other factor is exposure to pesticides. So these are the two things that we know may be factorial for causing blood cancer other than that there are no other features which we tell okay this can be the cause for blood cancer and other thing is that most of the blood cancers do not run in the families. There are chance in the same family two or three pampers may be affected more often they are due to the common exposure to common environmental pathogens environmental toxins rather than a genetic predisposition. So blood cancer is something nobody should be afraid of in at least in 2020 we should be eager to treat these patients to give them best of the treatment and most possibly a cure.