Many people with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) are cured. But your doctor cannot know straight away whether your lymphoma will come back or not. If your NHL comes back after treatment, your doctor might still be able to cure it.
Overall, treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma is highly effective and most people with the condition are eventually cured.
Current data from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) show an overall five-year relative survival rate of nearly 87 percent in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), 88 percent in patients with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), and 73 percent in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
The 5-year survival rate for NHL in the United States is 74%. The survival rates for NHL vary based on several factors. These include the stage and subtype of cancer, a person's age and general health, and how well the treatment plan works.
You may be relieved to finish treatment, but find it hard not to worry about the lymphoma coming back. (When cancer comes back after treatment, it is called recurrence.) This is a very common worry if you've had cancer. For some people, the lymphoma may never go away completely.
The incidence mortality rate for all causes is 2 per every 100 patients per year. The OS of our cohort at 10 years from diagnosis was 76% (95% CI: 72–79) and 52% at 30 years (95% CI: 48–57).
Lymphoma most often spreads to the liver, bone marrow, or lungs. Stage III-IV lymphomas are common, still very treatable, and often curable, depending on the NHL subtype. Stage III and stage IV are now considered a single category because they have the same treatment and prognosis.
Chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is one of the main tools used to treat lymphoma. Chemotherapy medications are chemicals that kill lymphoma cells.
It takes time but most people adjust well to life after a diagnosis of lymphoma and find a 'new normal'. This might involve making some changes to your everyday life. In this section, you'll find information to help you live well with and beyond lymphoma.
Lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma or Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia.
This is a rare, slow-growing type of lymphoma. It's found mainly in the bone marrow, lymph nodes, and spleen. This type of lymphoma can't be cured. But people can live with it for many years.
There is a chance that your treatment can increase the risk of getting another type of cancer in the future. This is because both chemotherapy drugs and radiotherapy work by damaging cells. They kill the lymphoma cells, but they can damage healthy cells too.
Stage 2. Around 90 out of 100 people (around 90%) will survive their Hodgkin lymphoma for 5 years or more after diagnosis.
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is usually treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy, although some people may not need treatment straight away. In a few cases, if the initial cancer is very small and can be removed during a biopsy, no further treatment may be needed.
The new immune cells can recognise lymphoma cells as foreign and help to get rid of them. Targeted treatments that help your immune system to recognise and attack lymphoma cells (such as checkpoint inhibitors).
Hodgkin lymphoma is one of the most curable forms of cancer. After treatment is complete, your care team will develop a survivorship plan that minimizes long-term side effects of treatment. Those risks include infertility, secondary cancers or toxicities to vital organs such as the heart and lungs.
Stage 3 lymphoma is treatable and often curable. Advances in new research, and clinical trials, are happening worldwide for this condition. You have every reason to hope and plan for a cancer-free future.
Overall, the chance that a man will develop NHL in his lifetime is about 1 in 43; for a woman, the risk is about 1 in 53. But each person's risk can be affected by a number of risk factors. NHL can occur at any age. In fact, it is one of the more common cancers among children, teens, and young adults.
Natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (NKTL) is a sub-type of Epstein–Barr virus (EBV)-related non-Hodgkin lymphomas common in Asia and Latin America but rare elsewhere. Its pathogenesis is complex and incompletely understood. Lymphoma cells are transformed from NK- or T-cells, sometimes both.
Burkitt lymphoma grows very rapidly, which means that symptoms usually develop quickly, over just a few days or weeks. The most common symptom is one or more lumps, which often develop in several parts of your body. These are swollen lymph nodes.
The five-year relative survival rate for stage 4 lymphoma varies and ranges from 57% to 86% based on the type you have.
Predictive factors
In general, lymphoma is considered to be very treatable. However, each patient's outlook can vary based on several factors, most notably the type and severity of the diagnosis and how early the cancer was detected.