Especially when caught early, it’s highly treatable, Engert said. Among patients in the study, whose average age was 32, 95 percent were still alive after eight years, according to the research.
The problem is that the chemo and radiation used to treat the disease can cause both short and long-term side effects, Engert explained.
Short-term complications include hair loss and infections. Those side effects occurred less often in those who had the less intensive treatment compared to the more intensive treatment. For instance, about 28 percent of those who had four cycles of chemo lost their hair, compared to 15 percent of those who underwent two cycles.
Cancer treatment also has long-term complications. Radiation can damage the heart, raising the risk of coronary artery disease and other cancers in survivors’ decades after the Hodgkin’s treatment, Lichtenfeld noted.
“One of the fallouts of our success treating Hodgkin’s lymphoma is that a lot of people are alive now who have other serious medical conditions as a result of their treatment,” Lichtenfeld said.
“As a result, investigators have been trying to find ways to further tailor therapy to reduce the treatments while maintaining the effectiveness.”
Although the practice is early-on in their statistics, the alternative cancer treatment shows hope for patients apprehensive about the heavy side effects of chemotherapy and radiation.