Bone marrow chemotherapy or bone Marrow suppression is a common side effect experienced during chemotherapy. This reduces the body’s ability to produce blood cells. The drugs used for chemotherapy treatment tend to inhibit the growth of cells in our body. As the cancerous cells grow at a very faster rate than the normal cells, they tend to decrease in number and eventually die out. However, as these drugs cannot distinguish between the healthy cells, it tends to have numerous side effects; including the destruction of the bone marrow. This is turn leads to several side effects in the body.

Bone marrow is a spongy substance that fills the bones. It contains blood cells that develop into RBC, WBC and platelets. These cells keep on dividing to form new blood cells. The number of cells keeps circulating in your blood within a normal range. This is called your blood count; this count is carefully monitored as myelosuppression is a common side effect of chemotherapy.

If the bone marrow is impaired during chemotherapy, the level of RBC and WBC count falls drastically. This is known as bone marrow suppression. As chemotherapy attacks the cancerous cells, it becomes difficult of the new bone marrow cells to replace the old ones. Their growth in short is stunted by the chemotherapy drugs.

White Blood Cells

White blood cells are very important for the immune system. They are the first agents to defend your body against infections. White blood cells are the first ones to get destroyed when chemotherapy affects the bone marrow cells because white blood cells have a very short life span. They only survive for a few days.

Because of chemotherapy, all the new cells are destroyed which are formed by the bone marrow. There is drastic drop in the number of white blood cells without the formation of any new cells. This condition might be serious as patients become more vulnerable to infections. They are prescribed to take prophylactic antibiotics to avoid interference with the treatment and also to help the patients fight infections. Without the antibiotics, a patient’s condition might worsen and it might also worsen the cancer. This might make going through chemotherapy very tough for patients.

Red Blood Cells

The red blood cells carry oxygen to all the different parts of the body as it contains hemoglobin. Low RBC count give rise to a condition called anemia, which leads to dizziness, headache, fatigue, irritability and low blood pressure. With the RBC count going down, there is less oxygen in the body and might further cause damage to an organ.

If the bone marrow is unable to produce new red blood cells during the chemotherapy treatment and their count decreases significantly, a blood transfusion needs to be done. The red blood cells are induced into the patients’ blood from an outside source or a donor. The red blood cells on an average live for 120 days therefore the patient might not experience the side effects arising from the shortfall of red blood cells for several weeks.

Platelets

Platelets are blood cells that are responsible for clotting. These cells live for an average of 10 days, so the effects become quite prominent within a week’s time after the bone marrow is unable to produce new cells owing to chemotherapy. The symptoms of low platelets count are excessive bleeding even for minor injuries, easy bruising, nose bleeds, headaches and even blood in the stool and urine.

Internal bleeding can also occur because of low platelets and this could become quite serious. If there is too much blood loss other organs in the body might get damaged as well.

Treatment for some types of cancers, like the treatment for blood cancer requires bone marrow transplants when chemotherapy drugs causes excessive damage to the blood cells. Doctors take the necessary precautions before they begin the chemotherapy treatment. They conduct blood tests before they administer these drugs and also during the treatment. Between the administration of two regimens, patients are given a rest period of two to three weeks so that their blood count comes back to normal. Monitoring blood counts helps the oncologists to see if patients need any supplements to increase the blood count and also to check if chemotherapy bone marrow does not cause severe side effects to patients.