Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy in the Management of the Malignant Lymphomas

Summary

This paper is restricted to discussion of malignant lymphomas originating primarily in the lymph nodes. During the last decade there has been a dramatic change in the management of patients with lymphomas, due to improvements in radiotherapy, in chemotherapy, in investigations to determine the extent of the disease, and above all to our acceptance that lymphomas are not always fatal.

It is now accepted that many patients with Hodgkin’s disease are curable by radiotherapy. We believe that many patients with lymphosarcoma and reticulo- sarcoma can also be cured. The efficiency of modern radiotherapy and cancer chemotherapy makes it sometimes difficult to select the best method of treatment for a particular patient.