What is the prognosis for someone with a rather aggressive form of non hodgkin's lymphoma.?

What are the best treatments and what are typical odds for survival?

check out web md, they usually have a section where you can ask questions or read information from others who have this disease.

The average survival is 6 to 8 years for patients with low-grade lymphoma. The outcome for patients with high-grade lymphoma depends upon the response to chemotherapy or other treatment, and the type of high-grade lymphoma. About 30% of adults with high-grade lymphoma are permanently cured.

Knowing the cell type would help, lymphoblasts, reticulum cells etc. If it is aggressive and not responding to therapy, the prognosis for a long like is minimal, a month or two??
Treatment is radiation and chemotherapy.

Many Non-Hodgkin's Lymphomas are curable, but all aggressive cancers carry a worse prognosis than their slow-growing counterparts. The good news is that, in general, aggressive tumors respond quickly to treatments such as chemo and radiation. However, since they are aggressive they also grow back quickly. Factors such as cell type and age are also considered as prognostic indicators so it is hard to say what the prognosis is in this case. It is typical for a patient with this disease to undergo several chemo regimens including CHOP, ICE and RICE. An autologous stem cell transplant is often done (the patient's own blood products are removed and later reintroduced.) The next step might be a donor stem cell transplant. Radiation is usually reserved for palliative care to relieve symptoms and is generally not considered a curative treatment. Remember that every person responds differently and remain positive!

Some of the information you have been given is erroneous. Low grade lymphomas are usually treatable for numerous or many years, but they are often ultimately incurable. High grade lymphomas may be classified as aggressive but are sometimes completely curable with radiation and chemo. These are general comments and there are no typical survival odds given the limited info you have given and considering the many varieties of NHL all with different treatments and prognosis.

Without knowing the exact type and staging of your NHL then all answers about prognosis you will be given will be at best general guesses. To further educate yourself about the various types of lymphoma, their treatments and prognosis I suggest you read the info available at http://www.lymphomainfo.net/lymphoma/sit...

good luck

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, is a type of lymphoma first described by Thomas Hodgkin in 1832. Lymphoma is characterized clinically by the orderly spread of disease from one lymph node group to another and by the development of B symptoms with advanced disease. Pathologically, the disease is characterized by the presence of Reed-Sternberg cells. Lymphoma was one of the first cancers to be rendered curable by combination chemotherapy.
Prognosis
The adverse prognostic factors identified in the international study are:

Age >= 45 years
Stage IV disease
Hemoglobin < 10.5 mg/dl
Lymphocyte count < 600/ul or < 8%
Male sex
Albumin < 4.0 mg/dl
White blood count >= 15,000/ul
Other studies have reported the following to be the most important adverse prognostic factors: mixed-cellularity or lymphocyte-depleted histologies, male sex, large number of involved nodal sites, advanced stage, age of 40 years or more, the presence of B symptoms, high erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and bulky disease (widening of the mediastinum by more than one third, or the presence of a nodal mass measuring more than 10cm in any dimension.)

Treatment-
Patients with early stage disease (IA or IIA) are effectively treated with radiation therapy although chemotherapy may also be advisable. Patients with later disease (III, IVA, or IVB) are treated with combination chemotherapy alone. Patients of any stage with a large mass in the chest are usually treated with combined chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Currently, the ABVD chemotherapy regimen is the gold standard for treatment of Hodgkin's disease. The abbreviation stands for the four drugs Adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine. Developed in Italy in the 1970s, the ABVD treatment typically takes between six and eight months, although longer treatments may be required. Another form of treatment is the newer Stanford V regimen, which is typically only half as long as the ABVD but which involves a more intensive chemotherapy schedule and incorporates radiation therapy.

my mom had NH lymphoma stage 4- five years ago and she is still in remission. her doctor said that often if you have an aggressive lymphoma that doesnt come back after two years- chances are it wont come back. i have heard this from several doctors.