Lymphoma

Healthcare providers diagnose lymphoma by doing physical examinations to evaluate potential lymphoma symptoms and biopsies to obtain tissue for examination by a medical pathologist. If laboratory tests show signs of lymphoma, providers may do certain blood and imaging tests to learn more about your condition and to plan treatment.

Blood tests

• Complete blood count (CBC) with differential to analyze different types of white blood cells.
• Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) to detect inflammation that may be a sign of lymphoma.
• Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) to detect large amount of cell “turnover” or growth/death.
• Liver and kidney function tests.
• Serum protein electrophoresis (SPEP) to evaluate monoclonal proteins (M proteins), which are abnormal proteins that your plasma cells produce.

Imaging tests

• Computed tomography (CT) scan to look for lymphoma signs such as enlarged lymph nodes, spleen or other organs.
• Positron emissions tomography (PET) scans to detect signs of cancer. PET scans are usually combined with low-resolution CT scans and are sometimes used in addition to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

If you have non-Hodgkin lymphoma, your provider may order laboratory tests to identify genes, proteins and other substances that are unique to specific non-Hodgkin lymphomas.