Hodgkin’s lymphoma, once considered an incurable disease, can be cured in 90 percent. patients – said the doctors during the Tuesday debate in Warsaw. They emphasized that the basic conditions for this are early diagnosis and appropriately selected therapy.
As prof. Wiesław Jędrzejczak, national consultant in the field of hematology, lymphomas are a group of several dozen different cancers that originate from cells of the immune system. There are two basic groups of them: non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas (other than Hodgkin’s lymphoma), which in Poland suffer from approximately 6 cases each year. people and Hodgkin’s lymphoma (Hodgkin’s lymphoma), diagnosed every year in approx. 1 thousand. sick.
The greatest number of cases of Hodgkin’s lymphoma is recorded in people between the ages of 20-30 and after the age of 50.
Prof. Walentyna Balwierz, head of the Department of Children’s Oncology and Hematology of the Children’s University Hospital in Krakow-Prokocim, noted that this cancer also occurs in children, although very rarely. Annually, 70-80 cases of Hodgkin’s lymphoma are found among the youngest. Mainly children over 10 are sick.
“Cancer is mainly located in the lymph nodes. It is also often a tumor in the mediastinum. Localization outside the nodes is rarer and is associated with a worse prognosis for the patient ”- said Prof. Jędrzejczak. Symptoms – apart from enlarged lymph nodes – include profuse night sweats, fever and weight loss that last for several weeks. There are also changes in blood counts, such as anemia and increased ESR (Biernacki’s reaction). Therefore, it is worth doing the morphology regularly – at least once a year.
Prof. Jędrzejczak noted that patients who are diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma early, i.e. in stage I or II, have a much higher – about 95 percent – chances of recovery compared to patients diagnosed in the late stage. In patients diagnosed in stage IV, the chances are reduced to 60-70 percent.
Primarily chemotherapy is used to treat patients with this cancer. Sometimes radiotherapy is needed, especially when disease outbreaks are large, emphasized prof. Jędrzejczak.
However, he added that in some patients the standard treatment did not bring any effect, and in some patients – despite the initial successes of the therapy – the disease recurred. Then very strong chemotherapy and autologous transplantation of hematopoietic cells (i.e. the patient’s own cells) are used. In patients who do not achieve a sustained response by this highly toxic method, a drug containing a monoclonal antibody combined with a cytostatics (brentuximab vedotin) can be used. Thanks to this, the cytostatics intended to destroy cancer cells is precisely delivered to them and – unlike standard chemotherapy – it does not cause damage to healthy tissues. This makes it well tolerated by patients. However, it is important to then perform a bone marrow transplant from another person.
“In Poland, this drug is not financed by the National Health Fund yet. However, the Ministry of Health is carrying out work to change this, ‘said prof. Jędrzejczak. He estimated that around 50 patients would need the drug in our country.
Prof. Balwierz explained that only chemotherapy is used to treat children with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and only in some cases is it supplemented with radiotherapy. (PAP)
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