Treatments for Hodgkin lymphoma

Your healthcare team will create a treatment plan just for you. The plan is based on your health and specific information about the cancer. What you want is also important when planning treatment. When deciding which treatments to offer for Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), your healthcare team will consider:

• the stage
• if you have B symptoms (fever, drenching night sweats and unexplained weight loss)
• if you have any unfavourable prognostic factors, such as bulky disease
• your age
• your overall health
• your risk for short-term or late side effects from treatment
• your lifestyle and what you want or prefer, including if you think you might want to have children in the future

Chemotherapy or chemoimmunotherapy, with or without radiation therapy, is the main treatment for HL.

Stem cell transplant may be offered for HL that doesn’t respond (is refractory) to treatment or that comes back (recurs or relapses) after treatment.

Surgery is rarely used to treat HL. It may be used to do a biopsy to help diagnose and stage the disease.

Nodular lymphocyte-predominant HL (NLPHL) is treated differently from HL. Find out more about treatment for NHPHL.