The fourth phase of treatment, called maintenance therapy, uses chemotherapy for several years to maintain the remission. Treatment by stage Treatment for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia depends on the prognostic group to which your child is assigned based primarily on your child's age and white blood cell count at diagnosis. Your child may receive treatment that is considered standard based on its effectiveness in a number of patients in past studies, or you may choose to have your child take part in a clinical trial. Not all patients are cured with standard therapy and some standard treatments may have more side effects than are desired. For these reasons, clinical trials are designed to test new treatments and to find better ways to treat cancer patients.
Induction chemotherapy is almost always successful in inducing remission.
Clinical trials are testing new ways of inducing remission. Your child's treatment will probably be intensive chemotherapy to kill any remaining cancer cells. Following intensification therapy, chemotherapy generally continues until the child has been in continuous remission for several years. Your child's treatment will probably be systemic or intrathecal chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or bone marrow transplantation. You may want to consider entering your child into a clinical trial of new chemotherapy drugs or bone marrow transplantation.