What is the role of radiation therapy in the treatment of newly diagnosed DLBCL patients?
We've been lucky to have radiation as a therapy choice for many, many decades. But really, its role in the treatment of lymphomas is sort of shrinking. And one reason is because the chemotherapies work so well, we can cure many patients with DLBCL and don't need to add additional therapies, because radiation can sometimes have a lot of side effects. Basically, how you know if radiation is going to have side effects is where is the spot that we're talking about irradiating? If it's in the leg, not so much. The leg can tolerate radiation quite well. If it's somewhere in the mouth of the nose, those are very sensitive areas and it's tough to irradiate them.
Most patients with DLBCL do not get any type of radiotherapy radiation, because mostly it's not needed. We've done pretty big studies to prove that adding it on top of chemotherapy doesn't give much benefit. There's probably a very rare subset of patients, with early stage two, stage one DLBCL. It's not very common, who might benefit from radiation, but for the vast majority, no role for radiotherapy.
HealthTree • May 21, 2025