What is the probability of lymphoma recurrence

Will lymphoma recur after being cured? What is the probability of lymphoma recurrence? This type of question is often the most worrying for many recovered patients. In fact, compared with other cancers, the probability of lymphoma recurrence is much higher. Even for patients who have completely remitted malignant tumors after chemotherapy or combined radiotherapy, it is not necessarily possible to completely eradicate tumor cells.

For patients with malignant tumors who achieve complete remission after chemotherapy or combined radiotherapy, it is not that the tumor cells have been completely eradicated. This complete remission is only a preliminary treatment success in the clinical sense. In fact, many tumor cells may still remain in the body at this time, but they are difficult to detect with the currently commonly used CT, B-ultrasound, PET-CT and hematological tests.

For example, although the initial treatment efficacy and complete remission rate of Hodgkin lymphoma and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma are very high, about one-quarter to one-third of cases will relapse. The relapse rate of peripheral T-cell lymphoma is even higher. Most indolent lymphomas are basically impossible to be completely cured with current treatments, and they may relapse sooner or later.