Malt lymphoma cancer?

Question

My friend has malt lymphoma cancer and we'd like to know if anyone has this type of cancer, what type of treatment are you under and any additional information that may be helpful. She's undergone chemo and it seems the cancer is under control for the time being. Her oncologist said that it is not curable. Thanks in advance for any information.

Answer 1

The most important investigation in the follow-up of patients with gastric MALT lymphoma involves direct inspection of the gastric wall through an endoscope, together with the examination of any abnormal areas, as well as the area previously involved by lymphoma. The exact frequency of the endoscopic investigations remains controversial. After confirmation of Helicobacter eradication, assessment endoscopies would normally occur initially every 3-4 months, extending to 6 monthly intervals and eventually to annual examinations. The exact regime will depend on many factors, including the time at which complete regression of the lymphoma at both endoscopic and microscopic levels has occurred.

The required duration of monitoring of patients in complete remission remains uncertain. The excellent outlook for people with these lymphomas means that some centres will discharge patients after a fixed time of maintained remission, while other clinicians may choose to follow-up their patients indefinitely as our knowledge about these lymphomas remains rather iincomplete at present.

In a small proportion of cases initially treated by Helicobacter eradication, relapse is detected at follow up endoscopies. In some patients this is associated with recurrent Helicobacter infection and this usually responds to further antibiotic-based therapy. In a few cases, microscopic relapse has spontaneously regressed with no further treatment. In cases where there is a clear relapse of gastric MALT lymphoma, this can be treated with chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy in the same way as for those patients who don’t respond to eradication therapy with a similar response rate. Transformation of the lymphoma to a more aggressive form (diffuse large B-cell lymphoma) occurs in less than 10% of cases and when this does happen it would normally be treated with intravenous multi-agent chemotherapy with the aim of curing the aggressive disease.

The outlook for people with gastric MALT lymphoma is usually good with about 80% of people surviving beyond the 5 year milestone and 77% going on to have disease free survival at 10 years.

Answer 2

I've never heard of malt lymphoma.
This site has the best info on Lymphoma that I know of:
http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/hm_lls
Best Wishes

Answer 3

here is a link to it. it is a type of non-hodgkins lymphoma

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MALT_lymphoma

Here are some links to adult non-hodgkins lymphoma

Adult Non-Hodgkins
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_4_1X_What_Is_Non_Hodgkins_Lymphoma_32.asp
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/CRI_2_3x.asp?dt=32
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/non-hodgkins-lymphoma
http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=7087
http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=8965