Archive for the ‘Diseases, Conditions and Treatments’ Category

Posted on January 13, 2012 - by admin

How is Lymphoma Treated?

There are cancer types that can be completely cured, while there are some which is too complicated to be treated. Lymphoma patients are fortunate because they can be completely free from the disease depending on their histology and cancer stage. Hodgkins and non Hodgkin’s lymphoma are two main types of lymphoma and NHL is indolent to be considered incurable. They can be treated but there is no possibility for the cancer to heal. Most of the time, patients would just go for alternative treatments to alleviate any pain and side effects they feel. However, standard medical treatments are still needed to preserve the unaffected are of your body from metastasis.

Chemotherapy is administered in the form of oral medication or through injection. It is a treatment using chemo pills or drugs and is considered effective because it passes through the vein and travels with the blood reaching the tumors. They are not like bacteria because they are body cells that formed into cancer cells due to changes in genes. There are a lot of drugs that causes negative side effects and causing damage to normal cells. In treatment plans, there are combinations of drugs used where each has their own unique effect to cancer cells. This is done to improve the results and sometimes the side effect is less. The number of drugs used for lymphoma are many to mention but not all of them are prescribed by doctors, what are given to the patients vary according to the stage and type of the cancer or simply based on what their body needs.

Radiation therapy has been used already for more than 50 years. It is helpful for shrinking tumors with the help of high dose radiation. Children are not advisable to undergo radiotherapy because of toxicity. Nonetheless, low dose of radiation and chemo can be combined for better survival rate. The radiation can either be given internally or externally. External beam radiation is common to lymphoma; it is painless and seems like getting an x ray. The radiation is delivered only to the location known to have tumor or affected of cancer. They have a procedure which they call total nodal radiation, where radiation is administered to all the lymph nodes in the body. Moreover, total body radiation is given to deliver radiation to the entire body. Radiation can also develop negative side effects. Most likely localized side effects or worst is second cancer.

The chemotherapy and radiotherapy are two of the most common standard treatments. However, both are not always the best considering the health condition of the patient. Doctors will recommend alternative treatments if the two are not good for cancer sufferers. Bone marrow transplant, immunotherapy and clinical trials are only a few of the emerging treatments for patients with lymphoma.

The treatments for lymphoma are always based not with the effectiveness of the procedure, but with the possibility of the patient to survive longer or become completely healed from cancer. Factors in staging and treatments are essential because these are the basis of medical specialists to help cancer sufferers.