What causes platelet drop?

Before lung cancer patients undergo chemotherapy, doctors must first conduct a routine blood test to check the white blood cell count and platelet count. The examination should be repeated every week. If the white blood cell or platelet count decreases to a certain level, the doctor will give the patient an injection of drugs such as Shengbai Neng or Huierxue to increase the white blood cell or platelet count. For some patients, even after using the above drugs, there was still no improvement in their white blood cell and platelet counts, and doctors had to stop chemotherapy. Why is this happening? This is the common adverse reaction of cancer chemotherapy drugs: "bone marrow suppression".

As we mentioned earlier, anticancer drugs are non-selective. In addition to killing tumor cells, they also have the same inhibitory effect on the body's metabolically active tissue or system, the "hematopoietic system." The half-life of platelets in the hematopoietic system is 6 to 7 days, and that of white blood cells is 6 hours, so they can easily be significantly reduced under the effects of chemotherapy drugs. The half-life of red blood cells is longer, at 120 days, and the reduction of stem cells in red blood cells is not easily reflected in the test of peripheral blood red blood cells. Since not all bone marrow hematopoietic cells in the hematopoietic system are in the proliferation phase,

During the period of stopping chemotherapy, proper isolation should be taken to avoid infection. If infection occurs, antibiotic treatment should be actively given. After lung cancer surgery, in addition to death caused by tumor recurrence or metastasis, the other two causes of death are infection and vascular disease (arterial or venous thrombosis or embolism). If the patient shows bleeding tendency, fresh blood should be transfused promptly. Some people have suggested performing autologous bone marrow transplantation while undergoing chemotherapy, but this is only a temporary stopgap measure and cannot be continued long-term.