What is non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and how to treat it

What is Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma? How is it treated?

1. Malignant lymphomas except Hodgkin's lymphoma are all non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is the result of monoclonal expansion. The dominant malignant cells in its composition can be derived from lymphocytes. The different stages of the entire differentiation process maintain extremely similar morphology, functional characteristics and migration patterns to normal cells corresponding to their differentiation sites.

2. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is not a simple disease as a whole. From the perspective of morphological and immunological characteristics, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is the result of monoclonal expansion. The dominant malignant cells in its composition can be derived from lymphocytes. The different stages of the entire differentiation process maintain extremely similar morphology, functional characteristics and migration forms to normal cells corresponding to their differentiation sites. This determines the wide differences in biology, histology, immunology, clinical manifestations and natural outcomes of different types of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

3. After the diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, chemotherapy and radiotherapy should be performed. This is suitable for patients with large lesions, because large lesions are prone to recurrence after chemotherapy. Radiotherapy alone is not suitable for patients in stage II, while patients in stage I have a 40% recurrence rate. Therefore, it is not clear whether radiotherapy should be added to the combined chemotherapy regimen for patients in stages I and II. For patients in stages III and IV, intensive combined chemotherapy is mainly used.

4. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation can also be used for treatment. Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation should be considered for patients who have failed conventional treatment or relapsed after remission. At present, it is advocated that autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation can be used as the first-line consolidation in some aggressive macromolecular tumors in order to obtain better disease-free survival and overall survival time. In a small number of patients, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation can even be considered.