Treatment and Prevention
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is usually treated with:
- biological therapy (helps the body's immune system to kill cancer cells)
- chemotherapy (medications that kill cancer cells)
- radiation therapy (high-dose X-rays to kill cancer cells)
- stem cell transplantation (so healthy blood cells can be more quickly replaced)
Treatment may involve either one type of treatment, or a combination of treatment options. The treatment plan will depend on the type of lymphoma, the stage of the cancer, and other factors.
There are two types of white blood cells in the body: T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes. People with lymphoma of the B-lymphocytes are more easily cured than those with T-lymphocyte lymphoma. It's also much easier to cure all types of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the early stages, when it hasn't had a chance to spread to other parts of the body.
Early stages of the disease are treated by radiation therapy aimed at the cancerous tumor. The radiation usually prolongs the person's life, although it may not cure the disease.
More advanced Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is usually treated with chemotherapy, using anti-cancer medications. These drugs may be given one at a time or in combination with other drugs. If treatment is started early in the disease, radiation plus combination chemotherapy can cure over half of all lymphomas. If the disease doesn't go away, or if it returns, the chemotherapy may be increased.
Chemotherapy in addition to radiation may be effective in treating large, bulky lymphomas or in controlling symptoms such as pain or bleeding from tumors.
In some cases, doctors may perform a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. Since chemotherapy destroys both the cancerous white blood cells as well as the normal, healthy white and red blood cells, people with lymphoma have very low levels of blood cells. A bone marrow transplant would help replace the lost blood cells without having to wait for the patient's body to make more. This allows doctors to use higher doses of chemotherapy. In this procedure, a doctor removes bone marrow from a compatible donor and puts it into the recipient. Bone marrow transplants work best in people under 55 years of age. Sometimes the bone marrow replacement is from the patient, rather than from a donor, if bone marrow was stored at an earlier time in the treatment process.
The treatment of choice for aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is several chemotherapy medications, usually in combination with anti-virus therapies and antibiotics.