 September is blood cancer awareness month so in this brief video I'm going to tell you a few things to note with regards to blood cancers. Blood cancers are some of the common cancers affecting population. Every year in India hundreds of thousands of patients are diagnosed with blood cancer. The common types of blood cancers are non-Hodgkins and Hodgkins lymphoma, acute leukemias namely acute myeloid leukemia, acute lymphoplastic leukemia, multiple myeloma, chronic myeloprolphyridineoplasms like chronic myelodukemia, polycythmiavira, essential thrombocytemia and myelofibrosis. Blood cancers may have varied clinical presentation. Some of the common symptoms that everyone should know with regards to blood cancers are generalized weakness, extreme fatigue, fever, drenching night sweats, unexplained loss of appetite and significant loss of weight, lumps in the neck, in the armpits, distinctions of the abdomen. Few patients may develop severe bone pain, back pain and fractures following a minor injury what are termed pathological fractures. Patients may have transfusion requiring anemia, may have bleeding symptoms in terms of easy crucibility, gum bleeding. If any of these symptoms are seen, patients should go to doctors, should get evaluated and examined. Now how do we diagnose blood cancers? When patient who is suspected of blood cancer goes to a hematologist usually the doctor first does a thorough clinical examination, takes history and then orders the common initial blood work including complete blood count to look at the form difference of the blood. He may order the biochemical test of liver function, adrenal function and special tests like a bone marrow examination which to many common people is a very scary term but really an OPD or an outpatient procedure. So essentially what we do is all the formed elements of the blood are formed in bone marrow which lies inside of the bones. So a small needle is inserted and the sample is drawn for a pathologist to have a look at the morphology and oftentimes special tests like flow cytometry, cytogenetic analysis and PCR based molecular genetic tests are done to confirm, to diagnose and also to risk stratify various types of blood cancer. In some cases of blood cancer the doctor may also order imaging studies like a PET CT scan to look for the extent of the disease which helps a treating doctor in optimal staging of the cancer before the therapy is initiated. How are blood cancers treated? Now blood cancers are treated by various modalities. Again one of the common notion that general public has is most of the cancers would need invasive surgical procedures for achieving cure. That is not true for most of the blood cancers. In fact surgical procedures are only needed in some of these cancers for getting samples for diagnosis like a lymph nerve apathy and certainly most of the blood cancers do not need a surgery for achieving cure. Most of the blood cancers are treated with one of following modalities of the treatment. Number one chemotherapy. So conventionally most of the blood cancers were treated with systemic chemotherapy. Depending on the type of cancer there are various protocols that one use. Some protocols are intense need hospitalization and need optimal nursing and barrier nursing care and there are some blood cancers which can be treated with chemotherapy protocols administered as an outpatient. Immunotherapy is another modality that we commonly use in some blood cancer treatment. Immunotherapy uses specific biological therapy which either induce or use body's own immune system to defeat the cancer and this modality of treatment in some cases may be used with chemotherapy termed as chemoimmunotherapy. We also do what is termed as bone marrow transplantation also termed as hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in some difficult to treat cancers in some blood cancers which have come back after the cure called as relapsed cancers and in some which are termed as refractory blood cancers. In allogenic or autologous bone marrow transplantation we use stem cells either from a healthy donor or stem cells collected from the patient himself to achieve cure in some of these cancers. Now in some cancers we also use a modality called as radiation therapy either alone or in combination with chemotherapy immunotherapy as a part of treatment protocol. So with newer modalities on the horizon immunotherapy CAR-T cell therapy have increased our options of treatment and have greatly improved the cure rates and survival for various blood cancers. I hope this small video gives enough information for patients and their families and for them to know the importance of early diagnosis of blood cancer, typing the blood cancer into a particular type, doing adequate diagnostic workup to get all the baseline information that one needs and that will greatly increase the possibilities of a good treatment protocol initiated early and increases the probability of achieving cure. Blood cancer no more should scare anyone. Blood cancer is easily diagnosable in today's day and age and in most of the cases there are very good treatment options possibly achieving cure and long-term survival. Stay safe, stay healthy.