How We Treat Leukemia and Lymphomas

This treatment is shown to be a reliable and effective approach for treating both leukemia and lymphoma. Chemo uses powerful medicines to kill cancer cells or to slow their growth through the body. These drugs circulate throughout the body and can cure or control your cancer or ease your symptoms. Depending on your diagnosis, your cancer may be treated with chemotherapy in combination with radiation therapy. Since chemotherapy can cause side effects, it’s important to talk to your care team about ways to manage these and maintain your quality of life.

Learn more about chemotherapy and infusion therapy.

This type of therapy uses high-energy X-rays to kill cancer cells. It’s not commonly used as the primary treatment for leukemia, but may be used to manage symptoms, treat cancer that has spread, or, in some cases, to prevent rejection of stem cell transplants.

Radiation may be the main treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma or be combined with other treatments, such as chemotherapy. If you have non-Hodgkin lymphoma, you may receive radioimmunotherapy (RIT) or be treated with external radiation therapy.

When radiation therapy and chemotherapy are used in combination, it can reduce the risk of cancer coming back. Radiation therapy can also be used when cancer has been resistant to or not responsive to chemotherapy. Occasionally, some types of radiation therapy are used as palliative treatment to control painful symptoms.

Learn more about radiation therapy.

Targeted therapy is the use of medicines that target parts of cancer cells that make them unlike normal cells. They do this without affecting most normal, healthy cells. The drugs are different from standard chemotherapy medicines and often have less severe side effects.

If you have leukemia, targeted therapy may work when chemotherapy medicines don’t. It will be given in the form of pills or by IV. Targeted therapy medicines can be used to treat some types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, usually after other treatments have been tried.

Immunotherapy is the use of medicines to help a person’s own immune system recognize and destroy invading cancer cells. These medicines can be in the form of pills or injections or given through an IV.

Immunotherapy may be used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia if the cancer is not responded to targeted therapy. It may also be used in the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

For people with lymphoma, surgery may be used to remove tumors. Surgery is not a common treatment for leukemia, but it can be an important part of your cancer care. For example, your doctor might perform surgery to remove a swollen spleen due to complications of leukemia. Your doctor may also do surgery to see if cancer has spread elsewhere in your body, which may require other types of surgery.

Learn more about cancer surgery.

If you have non-Hodgkin lymphoma and aren’t experiencing any discomfort, an approach called active surveillance (or watchful waiting) may be recommended. Together, we watch for any signs of change in your disease and do regular physical exams, blood tests and CT scans. If your lymphoma becomes more active, we’ll discuss which treatment options are best for you. Many patients who decide to do watchful waiting don’t require any type of other treatment and can remain with this monitoring plan for many years.