Lymphoma Treatment Guidelines from the NCCN

Whether you've just been diagnosed or you're in the middle of an aggressive treatment, there's often a lot of confusion and uncertainty, and a lot to remember. Often you feel like you're playing your own treatment by ear, loyally doing the doctor's bidding at each appointment.

There's a way to eliminate some of that uncertainty.

In 1995, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) established diagnostic, treatment, and supportive care guidelines for the management of virtually every cancer. These guidelines, developed as algorithms, are used by oncologists at all 21 NCCN member institutions and their affiliates (see below); rigorously created and constantly updated, they provide a diagnostic and treatment roadmap for the doctors and health professionals treating their patients suffering from cancer.

While they're written for doctors, the rest of us do have access.

1 Go to this page at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

2 Scroll to the bottom. Under the header Accessing the NCCN Guidelines it says "When you visit this page of NCCN.org …" click on that hyperlink.

3 Read the user agreement, if you agree, click 'accept' and 'submit.'

4 On the page you go to, click on either 'Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma' or 'Hodgkin Disease/Lymphoma' and it'll open into a large PDF file, which you can download and save to your computer.

The NCCN's member institutions include most of the top cancer hospitals in the US:
- City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles, CA
- Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center | Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Boston, MA
- Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, Durham, NC
- Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA
- Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
- Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center/Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Seattle, WA
- The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD
- Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, Chicago, IL
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
- H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, FL
- The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, Columbus, OH
- Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY
- Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO
- St. Jude Children's Research Hospital/University of Tennessee Cancer Institute, Memphis, TN
- Stanford Comprehensive Cancer Center, Stanford, CA
- University of Alabama at Birmingham Comprehensive Cancer Center, Birmingham, AL
- UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, CA
- University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, Ann Arbor, MI
- UNMC Eppley Cancer Center at The Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE
- The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
- Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, TN