What is chronic lymphocytic leukemia?
It is known either as chronic lymphocytic leukemia or as chronic lymphoid leukemia, and it is a blood cell disorder and a type of blood cancer. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia features an accumulation of lymphocytes in the blood that are incompetent and not completely functional. It is the most common type of leukemia in adults living in Western countries, and even though the majority of patients survive, some of them may die due to complications we will explain further.
This disease is more common in white males and the elderly, and less common in African Americans and females. According to the American Cancer Society, there were near 21,000 new cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2019, in the United States alone. This is an estimate, and the true incidence is apparently higher because many new cases are not diagnosed or reported. Other countries in the Western world have a similar incidence, but the disease is very rare in Japan, China, and other Asian countries.