What should I know when first diagnosed with DLBCL? The main thing is, you know, this, I think people always when they hear the word, the C word or the cancer word, they're like, you know, that's a life altering diagnosis. The thing I want people to know is DLBCL is not like terminal lung cancer or pancreatic cancer. This is a very treatable and potentially curable disease. So I think that sense of optimism and understanding that the other point also is like this is more of a, some people don't understand the importance of seeking care early. So if this is diagnosed, it's a disease again, we don't want to wait six months to or a year to do some treatment. The tempo of the disease is slightly faster compared to a slow growing lymphoma. So if diagnosed, we would want to start treatment early because earlier treatment has shown to also improve outcomes. Well the first thing, once it's diagnosed, you should seek treatment with a specialist as I like in mythology and colleges because they are the ones that will decide what is the best treatment for the patient. And in some institution, you can also access to this newer treatment that I mentioned in the context in general of a clinical trial. I emphasize that it is a cancer first of all. It is something that needs to be treated as soon as possible because if left untreated, these patients are going to die within weeks to months. But I highlight the fact that 60 to 70% of these patients are going to be cured with chemotherapy plus minus targeted therapies. I walk them through different treatment options and the prognostic features. Not every patient with the LBCL are going to have the same outcome and this depends on presence of certain poor or good prognostic features. So I explain what they are and which ones they have and we talk about their expected outcomes. But the most important thing is that it's a curable malignance, it's a highly curable cancer and time is of essence. The treatment has to be started without much delay.
HealthTree • September 7, 2025
