Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about leukemia in children.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero tofinals.com slash leukemia

or in the hematology section of the Zero to Finals pediatrics book. So let's get straight into it.

Leukemia is the name for cancer of a particular line of stem cell in the bone marrow.

This causes unregulated production of the specific type of blood cell that that stem cell will become.

Types of leukemia can be classified depending on how rapidly they progress, with chronic progressing slowly and acute progressing fast,

and the cell line that is affected, whether that's the myeloid or the lymphoid cell line.

So let's talk about the types of leukemia.

The types of leukemia that affect children from the most to the least common

are acute lymphoblastic leukemia or ALL, which is the most common in children.

Acute myeloid leukemia or AML, which is the next most common, and chronic myeloid leukemia or AML, which is the next most common,

and chronic myeloid leukemia or CML, which is rare.

Even more rare and specialist leukems exist,

but you're unlikely to come across them in your exams or in your clinical practice

unless you're a pediatric oncologist.

It's worth noting the ages at which these leukemia tend to present.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia peaks around age two to three years, and acute myeloid leukemia

peaks under two years of age. Let's talk about the pathophysiology.

Leukemia is a form of cancer of the cells of the bone marrow.

A genetic mutation in one of the precursor cells in the bone marrow leads to overproduction of a

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