Watch this friendly and easy to understand interview with one of the top specialist doctors in the World on this form of blood cancer. Prof Hillmen explained why treatment is often not offered intially, how that can be very worrying for patients, and how they decide when it is time to consider treatment. He explained that there are currently two strategies: to try and aim to get rid of the disease as much as possible or even cure CLL, the second is to try and to co-exist with it under control.

We discussed the need to have skilled expert care available to at least advise your doctors at crucial times. Some local teams will work very closely with the top experts and refer to them for help with unusual problems and to consider for clinical trials when appropriate. Prof Hillmen has a very personable friendly manner, and explained some complicated things in a very simple user-friendly way. 

Prof Hillmen has worked in clinical research to find new treatments for Chronic Lymphocytic since the 1990s. He is optimistic for our future. Like other blood cancers we are now seeing patients living a lot longer than earlier in his disease. He said “the outcome in terms of lifespan is now similar to patients without CL”. However, he doesn’t minimise the impact this condition can have on people due to increased infection risk and fatgue. Both of these can happen even quite early in the disease. He explained, “CLL is a disease of the immune system getting quite old and tired, really.”  

Watch part two: a hopeful future without Covid19

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