Remission of the disease is a medical conceptwhich implies a decrease or disappearance of signs of an existing disease. The presence of such a condition is characteristic of a peptic ulcer, various types of allergies, psoriasis, tuberculosis, mental disorders, cancer, etc.
Today we will find out in more detail what remission is, how it occurs in certain cases of illness, and what types of remission are distinguished by physicians.
Most often, remission is a consequence of eitherfeatures of the course of the disease (for example, in malaria, remission arises from the peculiar life cycle inherent in the malarial plasmode), or as a result of treating a patient that still does not complete recovery (for example, in case of cancer).
There are also remissions caused by changes in the body's response to pathogens (this is typical for seasonal allergic reactions or for the manifestations of a herpetic infection).
Doctors, in particular oncologists and hematologists,describing the patient's condition, they operate with the concept of partial and complete remission. These options for stopping the development of the disease differ in the degree of disappearance of its symptoms observed in the patient.
So, complete remission is the disappearance andpreviously manifested external symptoms of the disease, and signs determined during laboratory studies. However, such a condition in a patient sometimes is quickly replaced by an exacerbation, so patients often and during remission are forced to use supportive therapy. But sometimes the described phenomenon is set for months or even years.
By the way, experts consider the patientwhose complete remission lasts more than five years, getting rid of oncological or hematological pathology. In such cases, it is understood that the probability of a new occurrence of this disease (relapse) in such a patient is almost at the same level as that of ordinary, not previously ill people.
Partial remission implies a process in which some of the symptoms of the disease persist, but, as a rule, they are more weakly expressed.
And for leukemia, for example, there is a more accuratein determining the gradation of remission, as in some cases, for example, in the diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children, long-term remission is difficult to distinguish from complete recovery.
Thus, with clinical and hematological remission, the clinical signs of the disease disappear, and the composition of the bone marrow and peripheral blood normalizes.
In cytogenetic - tumor cells are not detected by cytogenetic analysis.
Molecular examination is characterized by the fact that no trace of cancer cells is found even when using methods of molecular genetic analysis.
In addition to the above types of slowing down the course of the disease, there is also spontaneous remission.
This is a very little-studied phenomenon that caneven to be defined as mysterious, in which, for example, a cancer patient suddenly disappears all laboratory signs of pathology and symptoms that appear externally. Of course, we need to make a reservation that this phenomenon is quite rare, but nevertheless it is recorded in the history of medicine.
And scientists are trying to understand what exactly causes the body to heal in these cases? What triggers his successful immune attack of cancer cells?
Researchers who have studied spontaneous remissioncancer patients, it is suggested in such cases to take into account that in getting rid of a terrible disease often played a large role the psychological state of the patient, who learned his diagnosis, namely, his attitude to the situation as something passing through, not interfering with life.
Важно знать, что, как ни странно это звучит, acute bacterial infections, such as streptococcal or staphylococcal, followed by hunger and fever, sometimes also push the body to a powerful immune attack and then complete remission.
So what is remission?Is this a calm before a new round of illness or getting rid of it? In each case, doctors will give different answers. But it must always be remembered that this state often depends strongly not only on the skill of the doctor, but also on the will to win over the disease in the patient.
