Staging hairy cell leukaemia

‘Stage’ means how far a cancer has grown or developed when it is diagnosed. Once your test results are all complete, your doctors will know more about how far your leukaemia has developed. Most types of cancer have a numbered stage, but stage is not used much for HCL.

Your doctor works out your treatment for HCL based on any symptoms you have and your general health and fitness

There are different ways of staging the various types of chronic leukaemia. If you are looking for information on the stages of chronic myeloid leukaemia or chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, you are in the wrong section and should follow the link to get to the information you need.

There is a staging system for hairy cell leukaemia (HCL), but specialists generally don’t use it. We have included it here in case you hear about it. The system uses two symptoms as a way of measuring disease. Doctors call these ‘markers’. The markers for HCL are

• Your level of anaemia (your red blood cell count)
• The size of your spleen

There are 3 stages in this system, depending on whether you have either of these symptoms and on how severe they are. If both are normal, or only slightly abnormal, it is stage 1. Moderate abnormalities are stage 2. And a very enlarged spleen and severe anaemia is stage 3.