How can chemotherapy affect blood production?

How can chemotherapy affect blood production?

Christian Cable, Dr. Ryan Osborne & Dr. Noam Z. Drazin (Cancer Experts) gives expert video advice on: What is 'chemotherapy'?; What are the basic types of chemotherapy?; How does chemotherapy work? and more...

A rapidly dividing cell is your bone marrow and the bone marrow is the soft middle part of the bone that is responsible for making the blood and those blood cells are being replenished every day. Chemotherapy will suppress normal blood production. That's why people undergoing chemotherapy may have anaemia which is a low red blood cell count or low platelets which can predispose to bleeding or more dangerously a low white blood cell count where you may be more vulnerable to infection and your doctor will consider chemotherapy and a fever to be an emergency that needs to be dealt with immediately.