Tag Archive for: lowered immunity

What Are Common Side Effects of DLBCL Treatment?

What Are Common Side Effects of DLBCL Treatment? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Lymphoma expert Dr. Matthew Matasar reviews common side effects of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) treatment.

Dr. Matthew Matasar is a lymphoma expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Chief of Medical Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Bergen. To learn more about Dr. Matasar, visit here.

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Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

What are common side effects of DLBCL treatment approaches? 

Dr. Matasar:

Like anything, the side effects are dependent upon the treatments that we use. So, treatments that use chemotherapy-based approaches will often have the side effects that we associate with chemotherapy. And obviously not all chemotherapies are created equally. But treatments like R-CHOP or R-CHP-pola, or Polarix regimen, these are treatments that use traditional cytotoxic chemotherapy agents and anthracycline based chemotherapy that have well-characterized side effects that are unfortunately unavoidable but often temporary things like hair loss.  

And hair loss is unavoidable with these treatments although temporary.   

The Oncovin or polatuzumab treatments can lead to a problem called neuropathy, which can manifest as numbness or tingling in the fingers or toes or constipation because our intestines have nerves too that are affected by these treatments. Certainly fatigue and lowering of the immune system are common with these and other chemotherapy medicines as well. And your doctors will always talk to you about ways to reduce the risk of infection such as vaccination and such as anti-infective medicines or immune boosting medicines to try to limit the risk of infection while receiving such treatments.