Keypoints

Introduction

Radiation is used widely in medicine, both to help with the diagnosis of conditions by taking pictures of the inside of the body using, for example, low doses of X-rays, and in the treatment of diseases such as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Therapeutic radiation kills cells in the body by damaging the DNA, making it impossible for the cell to repair damage to them. As radiation can kill normal cells along with diseased cells, it is important that the radiation used as treatment is directed as accurately as possible at the cells that are causing the disease in order to limit the side effects.

The most common use of radiation therapy in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is radiotherapy, which is given to patients who have just one or two diseased lymph nodes. Here, beams of radiation are concentrated on the affected areas, killing the diseased cells. It can also be useful for controlling the symptoms caused by localised lymphoma.

Another emerging use of radiation in the treatment of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is known as radioimmunotherapy. For this treatment, tiny amounts of radioactive material are attached to a monoclonal antibody. When the antibody reaches the lymphoma cell and attaches to it, the radiation kills the cell.

As with most treatments, it is important to note that radiation therapy is not appropriate in all cases of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Radiotherapy is also usually used only once on a particular area of the body, so other treatments, such as chemotherapy or monoclonal antibody therapy, may be more appropriate if the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma relapses.