Awareness Cards for GPs

[AussieNeil]

Last year the Australian Leukaemia Foundation produced some A4 information cards for presentation to GPs to raise the awareness of blood cancers. Given recent discussions on this group regarding raising awareness of CLL, I'm sure that the two referenced below will be of interest:

1) Is Lymphoma on your Radar? (see note below)

leukaemia.org.au/fileadmin/...

and

2) 'Watch and Wait' management of indolent Non-Hodgkin lymphomas

leukaemia.org.au/web/aboutd...

Considering the average GP in Australia is expected to encounter six or seven lymphoma patients in their career, you can appreciate the difficulty GPs have in recognising a possible lymphoma case!

Note:

Perhaps confusingly, CLL is both a leukaemia and a lymphoma and is included in the group of Non-Hodgkin lymphomas. To further confuse matters, CLL and SLL are classified by the WHO as the same B-lymphocyte blood cancer, with people with peripheral lymphocyte blood counts over 5 considered to have the leukaemia (CLL) presentation.

Neil

[Cllcanada Top Poster CURE Hero]

And to confuse everything one more time.... there is MBL... monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis

A diagnosis of CLL has been modified to require > 5 × 10 to 9th power (5,000,000,000 per litre or 5,000 per microlitre) of monoclonal B cells in the peripheral blood or evidence of extramedullary tissue involvement. A level below this threshold is considered monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis (MBL).

asheducationbook.hematology...

Further... SLL may be diagnosed in any case with less than 5,000/uL B-cells depending on the presence and the prominence of lymphadenopathy and organomegaly.