Lymphoma is a cancer occurring in the lymph nodes and other lymph tissues of the immune system. A common treatment for lymphoma is radiation therapy directed at the lymph nodes. Radiation therapy may be used as the primary treatment, or may be used in conjunction with surgery or chemotherapy. Radiation therapy kills cancer cells by targeting them with a beam of high-energy particles, usually X-rays. New advances in radiation therapy are helping doctors specifically kill the cancer cells while doing minimal damage to the surrounding healthy cells.
External Beam Radiation Therapy
Radiation treatments used to treat lymphoma are often administered by external beam radiation therapy. In this type of therapy, a machine outside of the body, called a linear accelerator, generates a beam of high-energy X-rays that are then aimed at the tumor, explains RadiologyInfo.org. The X-ray treatments are painless, and each treatment session usually lasts less than 30 minutes. Doctors may only administer the radiation to the lymph nodes that are known to have cancer, a treatment option known as involved field radiation.
Mantle Field and Inverted-Y Field Radiation
Involved field radiation can be divided into two types, depending on where in the body the radiation is aimed. Mantle field radiation is the term used to describe radiation treatment administered to the body above the diaphragm, including the chest, underarms and neck. By contrast, treatments administered below the diaphragm--to the abdomen, pelvis or spleen--are called inverted-Y field radiation, the New York Times Health Guide explains.
Total Nodal and Total Body Irraditation
In some cases of lymphoma, doctors may decide that a patient's best option for successful treatment of the cancer is to treat all of the lymph nodes with external beam radiation, not just the lymph nodes known to have cancer. This type of radiation treatment is called total nodal irradiation, according to the American Society for Radiation Oncology. In other cases of cancer that have spread to many parts of the body, doctors may administer total body irradiation, which delivers external beam radiation to the entire body, not just the lymph nodes.
Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy
A new, advanced form of external beam radiation is called intensity-modulated radiation therapy, or IMRT. This type of therapy uses a computer-controlled linear accelerator to generate very precise doses of radiation specifically targeted to the tumor site. Doctors first use a C-T scan to map the exact shape of the tumor, then the computer-controlled accelerator modulates the intensity of the X-rays to focus the dose of radiation specifically on the 3-D shape of the tumor, as describes by RadiologyInfo.org. This highly-targeted dose of radiation minimizes damage to surrounding healthy tissue.
