You may be offered:

Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy uses special drugs to kill cancer cells.

Most CML patients begin their treatment with a drug called Hydroxyurea, which is given in capsule form.

Most patients will then go on to receive a recently introduced drug called Imatinab mesylaye (Glivec). You can take it in tablet form and it seems to have few side-effects. Most patients respond well to Glivec and return to normal levels of activity with few, if any, ongoing symptoms of their leukaemia. Your doctor will need to see you regularly to monitor your blood or bone marrow for genetic or molecular assessment. Your doctor will explain to you what these assessments mean.

Although patients respond well to Glivec it is currently thought that the leukaemia is not cured with this drug and would recur if Glivec was stopped.

Allogenic (donor) bone marrow transplant
At the moment, a donor transplant offers the only chance of complete cure for CML.

This means taking healthy bone marrow cells from another person (a donor) and giving them to the patient.

The cells are normally taken from a close relative such as a brother or sister whose bone marrow is very like the patient's. If there is no close relative, doctors may be able to find another donor from a bone marrow register.

Bone marrow transplants aren't suitable, or possible, for all CML patients. For a transplant to go ahead, the donor must be a close match. The patient also needs to be fit enough to get through this aggressive type of treatment.

Giving your consent
Your doctors will tell you about the risks, benefits and side-effects of your options. You will need to agree to the treatment before it can start. This is called giving your consent. Don't be afraid to ask questions if there is anything you don't understand.