Most anti-tumor drugs, due to the lack of ideal selectivity, often cause different degrees of damage to various organs while killing tumor cells. The most common and major toxic side effects of chemotherapy in leukemia are as follows: 1. Bone marrow suppression: The degree, speed and duration of bone marrow suppression by various antitumor drugs are different, such as high dose of Maryland for slow granulation, which can cause rapid decrease of white blood cells, but if the dose is not reduced or stopped in time, it can cause serious bone marrow regeneration disorder and cannot be recovered. Generally, the bone marrow suppression caused by chemotherapy is highlighted by the decrease of white blood cells and platelets. As long as the hematopoietic stem cells are not seriously affected, the changes of blood and bone marrow during this period are temporary and can be recovered.
2. Gastrointestinal reactions: Almost all anti-leukemia drugs can cause gastrointestinal symptoms of varying degrees, manifested as loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and even blood in stool. These reactions can be caused by drug irritation or by drug damage to proliferating gastrointestinal mucosal epithelial cells. A few drugs can act on the vomiting center of the brainstem. Gastrointestinal reactions generally do not affect the treatment. Recently, with the application of central antiemetic drugs, gastrointestinal reactions have been largely controlled or alleviated, and for the rare patients with frequent diarrhea or blood-like stools, the drugs need to be stopped for observation and corresponding active treatment.
3, immunosuppression: chemotherapy has different degrees of inhibition of the body’s immune function, which is also one of the reasons why patients after chemotherapy are prone to infection or infection is not easily controlled.