lymphoma
Meaning of lymphoma: Dozens of separate diseases sit under this one word, some watched for years without treatment and others needing care within days.
Definition of lymphoma
Lymphoma is a cancer of lymphocytes, the white blood cells that direct and carry out the immune response. The abnormal cells usually collect in lymph nodes, producing painless swelling, but they can also settle in the spleen, bone marrow, skin, stomach or brain. The name covers many distinct diseases that differ sharply in how fast they grow and how they are treated.
How lymphoma is built
- lymph/o Combining form · Latin lymph, lymphatic tissue
- -oma Suffix · Greek tumour, mass, swelling
A medical term is read from its ending backwards: the suffix first, then the prefix, then the root. See all 223 word parts.
What separates Hodgkin from non-Hodgkin lymphoma?
The dividing line is a cell. Tissue from Hodgkin lymphoma contains large abnormal cells, classically with two mirror-image nuclei, named Reed-Sternberg cells; they are scattered thinly among a much larger population of ordinary reacting immune cells. Everything without them is grouped as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which is not one disease but a bracket holding the great majority of cases.
| Feature | Hodgkin | Non-Hodgkin |
|---|---|---|
| Defining cell | Reed-Sternberg cells present | Absent |
| Number of diseases | A few closely related types | Many distinct entities |
| Spread pattern | Tends to move to neighboring node groups in order | Often scattered from the outset |
| Age pattern | Peaks in young adults and again later in life | Becomes steadily more common with age |
Why does growth rate matter so much?
Non-Hodgkin lymphomas are sorted into indolent and aggressive groups, and the label predicts almost everything about the course. Indolent types, such as follicular lymphoma, grow over years and may be monitored rather than treated while they cause no trouble, but they are hard to eliminate for good. Aggressive types, such as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, double quickly and can become dangerous within weeks, yet they respond to treatment far more completely and a substantial share are cured. Fast growth is therefore not the same as poor outlook.
How is the exact type established?
A whole lymph node is usually removed rather than sampled with a needle, because the architecture of the node carries information a fragment cannot show. Pathologists then stain for surface markers to identify the cell of origin, most commonly B lymphocytes and less often T or natural killer cells, and test for specific chromosome rearrangements. Staging scans map how far the disease has spread through the immune system and beyond it. Fever, drenching night sweats and unexplained weight loss are recorded separately as B symptoms, because they carry weight of their own.
Used in a sentence
A lymph node biopsy was performed to determine the specific type of lymphoma present.
Good to know
The presence or absence of Reed-Sternberg cells on tissue examination is the key finding that separates Hodgkin lymphoma from the many distinct diseases grouped under non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Word origin
Where “lymphoma” comes from
Formed from Latin lympha, meaning clear water or fluid, referring to the lymphatic system, combined with -oma, meaning tumor.