What is Consolidation in Leukaemia and Why it is Important?

I have described what remission induction in my previous posts. This remission induction is followed by consolidation. Simply, consolidation means giving further treatment, so the patient won’t have the disease again. Consolidation is achieved by giving further treatment when the patient remits. If not, the disease will reappear invariably. The following factors determine whether consolidation will be done or not.

·         Type of leukaemia

·         Patient risk factors

·         The patients tolerance of treatment

Why consolidation is important?

Even though remission induction means bringing the bone marrow and the blood in to normal state, there could be still some leukaemic cells remaining in the bone marrow, undetected. So, these cells can multiply and the disease can relapse. Therefore, there should be a way to prevent these cells from raising their heads. This is where consolidation comes into play. The continuation of the treatment prevent the disease from relapsing again.

References : Kumar P and Clark M, 2009. Clinical Medicine. 7th ed.