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What You Need to Know about  Hodgkin's Lymphoma

Clinical Trials

Many people with Hodgkin's disease take part in clinical trials. Doctors conduct clinical trials to learn about the effectiveness and side effects of new treatments. Trials are exploring new ways of giving radiation therapy and chemotherapy, new drugs and new drug combinations, and biological therapies. High-dose chemotherapy with bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cell transplantation is also being evaluated. In some trials, all patients receive the new treatment. In others, doctors compare different therapies by giving the new treatment to one group of patients and the standard treatment to another group; or they may compare one standard treatment with another. Research like this has led to significant advances in the treatment of Hodgkin's disease. Each achievement brings researchers closer to the eventual control of cancer.

People who take part in clinical trials have the first chance to benefit from treatments that have shown promise in earlier research. They also make an important contribution to medical science.

Patients who are interested in entering a clinical trial should talk with their doctor. They may also want to read the National Cancer Institute booklet Taking Part in Clinical Trials: What Cancer Patients Need To Know, which describes how studies are carried out and explains their possible benefits and risks. The NCI cancerTrials Web site at http://cancertrials.nci.nih.gov provides detailed information about ongoing studies for Hodgkin's disease. Another way to learn about clinical trials is through the Cancer Information Service.

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