Hello and welcome to the zero to finals podcast. My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be

talking to about leukemia. And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic, you can

follow along at zero to finals.com or in the hematology section of the zero to finals medicine book.

So let's get straight into it.

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

And this causes unregulated production of certain types of blood cells.

The different types of leukemia can be classified depending on how rapidly they progress.

So chronic leukemia is slow and acute leukemia is fast. And they can also be classified based on

the cell line that is affected. So it could be the myeloid or the lymphoid cell line. So this makes

four different types of leukemia

that are most common to come up in your exams

and in real life.

Acute myeloid leukemia,

acute lymphoblastic leukemia,

chronic myeloid leukemia,

and chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

There are also rarer and more specialist leukemias such as acute promylicytic leukemia

that you're unlikely to come across in your exams, but it's worth being aware that there are

other types of leukemia as well.

Firstly, let's talk about the path of physiology.

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

So a genetic mutation in one of the precursor cells in the bone marrow

...