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Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the usual treatment. Most patients are given four different types of drug – together, these are called the CHOP- R chemotherapy regimen. The drugs are given by injection, together with tablets. Treatment usually takes about six months. Some patients then have radiotherapy after their chemotherapy.
Radiotherapy
Radiotherapy uses radiation to kill cancer cells. For lymphomas, it is given from outside the body – this is called external beam radiotherapy. Your doctor may suggest this treatment if you have a large mass of enlarged lymph nodes. Usually the radiotherapy is given after chemotherapy.
Some patients may have radiotherapy before stem cell rescue (see below).
High dose chemotherapy with stem cell rescue
For some lymphoma patients the final part of their treatment will be high dose chemotherapy with stem cell rescue. This can be autologous from self or allogenic from a relative or unrelated donor
Chemotherapy can damage bone marrow and lead to problems such as anaemia, infections and bleeding.
After standard chemotherapy, bone marrow recovers on its own… but high dose chemotherapy does more damage, and bone marrow needs help to recover.
Before you have high dose chemotherapy your doctors will take some stem cells from you. These are stored, ready to give back to you afterwards. When they are put back into your body the cells start to grow and multiply again.
There are two ways of getting the stem cells. The most usual way is to get them from the blood. A special machine collects bone marrow cells that are circulating in the blood. This is called peripheral blood stem cell harvesting. Less usually, some bone marrow is removed. This is called bone marrow harvesting.
After the harvesting, you have your high dose of chemotherapy. Later your undamaged blood stem cells (or bone marrow) are given back to you through a drip.
The chemotherapy and stem cell rescue will involve a stay in hospital of two or three weeks.
For more information about treatments, go to our cancer treatments section.
