What are the side effects of chemotherapy and low white blood cell count injections?

For cancer patients, the most common treatment method is chemotherapy. During the chemotherapy process, the bone marrow will be inhibited to a certain extent, which will cause a decrease in the body's white blood cells and a continuous decline in human immunity. Therefore, a whitening injection may be given at this time to help increase the body's white blood cells. When taking the whitening injection, the patient will experience obvious discomfort, pain, convulsions and other side effects.

What are the side effects of white blood cell injections for low white blood cell count?

The patient may feel obvious discomfort, which is mainly manifested as swelling and pain in the entire spine, especially in the lumbar and sacral region, and sometimes throbbing pain. This feeling is very obvious and unbearable, as if there is an awl drilling inside. It is difficult to even straighten the back. At this time, you can only lie still. If you try to sit up, you will scream in pain. It is common to hear people in the ward groaning in pain or rolling around in bed because of this. The pain also often occurs in the hips, shoulders and other areas where bone marrow hematopoiesis is active. It usually lasts for 2 to 3 days and gradually eases.

When pain comes, it is recommended not to endure it. Enduring it means the painful experience will deepen, and you will not be able to rest in peace, which is not conducive to recovery. It is recommended that for mild cases, oral ibuprofen or Celebrex can be used; for more serious cases, oral tramadol capsules can be used; for more serious cases, simply inject pethidine or morphine. These drugs will not cause addiction when used for a short period of time to relieve short-term pain.

Whitening injection effect

During cancer chemotherapy, chemotherapy drugs inhibit bone marrow hematopoiesis, leading to a decrease in white blood cells, sometimes even as low as 500 per microliter. This is called agranulocytosis. This period can lead to a serious decrease in the body's immunity, and may lead to secondary infections in the lungs, intestines, oral cavity, and perianal mucosa. This is the most common and most serious toxic side effect of chemotherapy. In order to restore the hematopoietic function of the bone marrow as quickly as possible, bone marrow colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) is used clinically to stimulate rapid hematopoiesis in the bone marrow, among which injections to increase white blood cells are more commonly used.

Will taking a white blood cell injection cause bone marrow depletion?

Some people worry that the white blood cell-raising injection is a "draining the pond to catch fish" strategy that will deplete the bone marrow reserves. This view is somewhat alarmist and does not make sense. The human body has a rich reserve of bone marrow. Let's do some math: White blood cells have a very short lifespan, with one generation occurring every 7-14 days on average. This means that approximately 26-52 generations of white blood cells can grow in a year, and a person will "harvest" approximately 2,000-4,000 generations of white blood cells in their lifetime (assuming they live to be 80 years old). During chemotherapy, the accelerated harvesting of several generations of white blood cells through white blood cell-raising injections is insignificant overall. It can be said that the human bone marrow bank is a "sea" rather than a "swamp".