7 common sense about chemotherapy for lymphoma

Chemotherapy is a commonly used auxiliary method for treating lymphoma. Do you have a deep understanding of chemotherapy? The following is a summary of some common knowledge about chemotherapy, which I hope will be helpful to you.

Patients undergoing initial treatment should be treated with conventional chemotherapy or radiotherapy as the main approach. For some patients with relapsed or refractory disease or patients who are not suitable for conventional treatment, appropriate options can be selected based on their condition.

Almost all chemotherapy drugs have side effects such as bone marrow suppression, hair loss, gastrointestinal reactions, liver and kidney damage, but the degree and emphasis of occurrence vary.

If patients have received high-dose, multiple courses of chemotherapy, especially certain drugs that affect reproductive function, it is recommended that patients avoid childbearing during treatment and consider childbearing 3 years after the end of treatment.

Pelvic radiotherapy and chemotherapy with alkylating agents and procarbazine have extremely toxic side effects on the gonads, especially for adolescent patients who are more sensitive and fragile, which can lead to hypogonadism and infertility.

Regardless of the type of lymphoma, most patients will relapse after changing the chemotherapy regimen and then undergoing treatment again. It is difficult to cure the disease by relying solely on conventional chemotherapy at regular doses.

No chemotherapy regimen can achieve 100% efficacy; its effectiveness mainly depends on the individual differences of patients.

Some patients naturally carry certain drug-resistant genes and are naturally resistant to certain chemotherapy drugs. Therefore, an examination to evaluate the efficacy of the treatment is generally performed after every 2 to 3 cycles of chemotherapy.