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Video

Who is the best person to treat my DLBCL?

Posted by
HealthTree Logo HealthTree
• August 29, 2024

Description

Learn about the best person to treat DLBCL in this video.

On this video

Healthtree contact Elif Yilmaz, MD

Elif Yilmaz, MD

Healthtree contact Praveen Ramakrishnan, MD

Praveen Ramakrishnan, MD

Transcript

So again, you know, any competent oncologist, you know, because DLBCL, as I said, is relatively blood cancers as a whole are rare diseases. But if you look at again among the subset of lymphomas, this is the most common lymphoma. So again, community oncologists can also treat a DLBCL very effectively with like regimens like HRCHAAP or PolaRCHIP. The other option that I talked about or even there is a more aggressive chemotherapy called Dose-Adjusted R-EPOC for some very aggressive forms of diffuse large piece of lymphoma. All of these can be still done to the community. So the main thing is getting patients the access to an oncologist who is competent enough to give safely administer the chemotherapy monitor for side effects and complete the potentially four to six rounds of chemotherapy needed for their stage of disease. Where does an academic center like ours or a university come into play? As we said, like, you know, we are always in the search for improving the current standard of care. So the whole field of oncology, especially hematologic oncology is being transformed with the advent of more newer immunotherapies and cell therapies, including CAR T cells, which are the craze of the town right now. So we are trying to incorporate these immunotherapies more and more upfront. So patients always we look for clinical trial options for anybody diagnosed with any type of blood cancer. And the main thing is, you know, if you have access to an academic center, which has a very exciting clinical trial, and if you have a more aggressive version of DLBCL for which the standard of care chemotherapy does not cure like 90% of people, then that could be an option to explore, especially if they are looking at incorporating cell therapy or by specific antibodies again in the more upfront setting. Usually they start with their primary care, especially if they're presenting with enlargement of the lymph nodes in the neck. Usually those patients are treated with antibiotics initially thinking that this could be an infection. When they don't respond to antibiotics, usually they are referred to ENT specialists and from there they come to us if their biopsies show lymphoma. Some of the patients are going to have different pains in their body, could be the bone pain or abdominal pain. They're going to start with certain scans. Maybe they're going to go to the ER first, but that abdominal pain and the CT scan is going to show enlarged lymph nodes. Some of the patients rarely they will have organ involvement such as the nervous system involvement. Have a more dramatic presentation, could be confusion, could be seizures, could be altered mental status, but majority of them are going to reach out to us through their primary care physicians.

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