I'm not much one for numbers and statistics, because it's too easy to look at the negative side of them or imagine that they speak an absolute truth instead of a possible trend, but these numbers represent some good news:
Over the last 10 years or so, deaths and complications from blood cancers (leukemias and lymphomas) have dropped significantly. The article from HealthDay is here.
Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle (a major lymphoma treatment and research center) looked at 2500 blood cancer patients between the early 90s and 2007, and found over that time a 41% drop in mortality (along with other positive trends -- read the article for more details).
The study looked especially at bone marrow and stem-cell transplants, and pointed to advances in understanding how those transplants work, how to avoid complications like infections and organ damage, and how to best deal with complications that do arise.
Pretty significant stuff. Right now, transplants are used a lot of times as a kind of last resort (or close to last resort) for lots of blood cancer patients, including those with Follicular NHL. It's a pretty aggressive treatment usually, involving some heavy duty chemo, although more recently, transplants have evolved to sometimes not require such nasty conditioning.
It's all yet another positive trend in lymphoma treatment. We're getting better from both ends: the most aggressive treatments and the least aggressive (targeted therapies like monoclonal antibodies). All more reasons to be hopeful.
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