To diagnose NHL, your doctor will take a complete medical history and perform a physical examination to see if your lymph nodes are enlarged. Additional tests will need to be performed because enlarged lymph nodes do not necessarily indicate NHL; they could indicate temporary infection instead.
Your doctor will take a blood test, perform a biopsy of the lump, and use imaging techniques such as chest X-ray, CT scan, and PET scan to view the lymph nodes throughout the body.
Chemotherapy is the treatment of choice for most lymphomas. Even in late-stage lymphoma, it has achieved positive results.
Depending upon the stage of the lymphoma, chemotherapy can be administered on its own or in combination with radiation therapy to treat NHL. If the NHL is of the slow-moving variety, your doctor may opt to watch and wait or pursue a less aggressive therapy treatment. In extreme cases of NHL, bone marrow transplantation (BMT) may be recommended.
Prior to chemotherapy, your doctor may suggest surgery to remove as much cancerous tissue as possible, especially stomach tumors, which tend to be bulky. However, conventional wisdom is that this type of surgery may be unnecessary.
Depending on the type of lymphoma, the five-year survival rates range from 20 percent to 95 percent. Aggressive lymphomas may cause death quickly, but are often curable. Low-grade lymphomas may be hard to cure, but grow slowly and allow the patient to live for several years.
