Hodgkin's Lymphoma Treatment

The main types of treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma are:

Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Chemotherapy for Hodgkin's is described in detail on the Hodgkin's Chemotherapy Page.
Bone marrow and peripheral blood transplants
Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) and peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) are the use of high doses of chemotherapy with a rescue of the immune system afterwards. More on the Transplantation Information Page.
Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy is being studied in Hodgkin's treatment including monoclonal antibody therapy (such as rituxan) and vaccine therapy may not be far off.
Radiation therapy
Radiation for Hodgkin's treatment usually comes from a machine outside the body (external beam radiation therapy). Radiation therapy given to the neck, chest, and lymph nodes under the arms is called radiation therapy to the mantle field. Radiation therapy given to the mantle field and to the lymph nodes in the upper abdomen, the spleen, and the lymph nodes in the pelvis is called total nodal irradiation. Radiation therapy may be used alone or in addition to chemotherapy. Radiation has been used in early stage disease or in later stages directed at bulky disease (areas where there are large tumors). With the effectiveness of current chemotherapy, radiotherapy may be limited to unresponsive disease or very localized disease. Current medical literature should be examined and talk to your medical team.

Clinical trials

Clinical trials are often used for people who are not responsive to conventional treatment or who wish to help researchers test new therapies. New therapies may include variations on chemotherapy drug combinations or the addition of immunotherapy for example.

Combination therapy

Several types of therapy may be combined - for example immunotherapy is being studied in conjunction with traditional chemotherapy drugs to make them work better. Likewise, depending on disease presentation, radiotherapy may be added to chemotherapy.

Pretreatment Testing

Prior to treatment, the doctors may perform additional tests to measure such things as heart function (MUGA) and pulmonary (lung) function (Pulmonary Function Test). This sets a baseline to determine if lung or heart function is impacted by the treatment.

To learn more about pretreatment testing, see:

Related Reading

Online Resources

More Articles

More Articles

Amazon.com is pleased to have the Lymphoma Information Network in the family of Amazon.com associates. We've agreed to ship items...

The question ought to be what are myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), since this is a group of similar blood and bone marrow diseases that...

Merkel Cell Carcinoma (MCC) is a very rare and aggressive skin cancer that usually develops when a person is in his or her 70s. It is...

Radiation Therapy Topics

...

At some point, the Seattle biotech company Cell Therapeutics Inc (CTI) should earn an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for utter and...

Site Beginnings

This site was started as Lymphoma Resource Page(s) in 1994. The site was designed to collect lymphoma...

Three papers appearing in the journal Blood and pointing towards a regulator-suppressor pill could offer hope to blood cancer...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted a third so-called Breakthrough Therapy Designation for the investigational oral...

The US Food and Drug Administration today has approved an expanded use of Imbruvica (ibrutinib) in patients with...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced that it has granted "Breakthrough Therapy Designation" for the investigational agent...

According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team from the University of California, San...

Pharmacyclics has announced that the company has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for...

New research suggests that frontline radioimmunotherapy...

Gilead Sciences has announced results of the company's Phase II study of its investigational compound idelalisib, an oral inhibitor of...

Sitemap