What is follicular lymphoma?

What is follicular lymphoma.
So follicular lymphoma in general
is a type of cancer that forms in a part
of our immune system called lymphocytes.
So those are cells that help
fight infections.
So certain types of genetic mutations
can occur within the cell.
And then that cell turns into a cancer
cell and starts to multiply and outgrow
the other healthy cells
within a lymph node.
So form lymphoma
basically is a form of blood cancer.
Lymphomas are blood cancer.
They come from the limbic system.
And basically the way I describe it
to people is that your
your lymphatic system
is part of your immune system.
It's very important for your response and
for protecting your body from infections.
And it does a magnificent job of that.
What the immune system has to do,
and the lymphatic system
especially is has to,
you know, constantly regenerate itself.
And so there are things that can go awry
in that process.
And basically, you know, those tissues
develop the ability to,
you know, to grow out of control.
And that can cause a number of problems.
We think of follicular lymphoma
as is basically a slow growing
form of lymphoma or what's also termed
as indolent formal lymphoma.
It's actually the most common form of slow
growing lymphoma.
And that has a number
of particular indications, you know,
sort of implications for
for how we follow patients.
You know, when we decide to do treatment,
what those treatments are,
how we follow them afterward, etc..
First of all,
we call long form of cancer of the lymph
nodes, which are the glands that swell up
when you have an infection.
But it's really also
cancer of the lymphocytes,
which are white cells
that could be everywhere.
In a very maybe simplistic way
when it comes to B-cell non-Hodgkin
lymphoma, we have two big groups,
the slow growing and the fast
growing lymphoma and sort of the lone
farmer falls under the umbrella of slow
growing lymphoma.
So these are lymphomas because are
so slow, pace may not need to be treated.
And we tend to follow very specific
guidelines called E.L.F.
For growth criteria to decide
which patients need to be treated.