Signs & Symptoms of Childhood Lymphoma

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. David Hill and today we're going to be talking about signs and symptoms of childhood lymphomas. Lymphomas are malignancies, cancers, that arise within the immune system, particularly the lymph nodes of the immune system and the cells that those nodes help create. Because of we have lymph nodes in the immune system throughout our body, they can present in all sorts of different ways and we have to be astute to look for them. They account for about ten percent of childhood cancers. The most obvious signs of course, are swallowing lymph nodes. You have sets of lymph nodes around your neck, around your ears, behind your neck, over your clavicles here, under your armpits, down near the groin, and a few other places that you can feel them in the body. Any time you feel a node on your child that is swollen more than about a half an inch that doesn't move when you try and move it around, or that is not tender, almost rubbery or eraser like in texture, you might bring that to your doctors attention. That's real normal for children to get swollen lymph nodes when they get strep, or a cold, or even dandruff, but those lymph nodes tend to move around, sometimes they're swollen and they should be sort of soft, rather than rubbery. They also shouldn't be greater than two centimeters in size. Other things we see with lymphoma and other childhood cancers include difussant, like sweating, fever, fatigue. Now obviously if your child catches a cold or a flu, he or she may have any of those symptoms, but if they go on more than the usual duration of a cold or if they seem out of proportion with the rest of the illness, it's probably a good idea to let a doctor check your child out and try to figure out what's going on. It's almost never a lymphoma, but the few times that it is, we're always glad that we checked. Lymphomas can form solid tumors in lots of different places. Some of them will form in the abdomen and cause abdominal pain and even blockages in the intestines, some can form near the blood vessels in the trachea, in the chest, compressing the airway or compressing blood flow. They can form in the neck as well and compress vital structures there. They can even form in the skin and in the bones. This can all be lymphoma so a child who has an unusual swelling or an unexplained pain is always worth checking out. It's easy, of course, to start seeing lymphomas behind every ache and pain, and bad day that a child has, and I'd encourage you not to get too concerned about them, but at the same time, trust your instincts and if you think something is really unusually wrong with your child, it's never wrong to ask your child's doctor to help you out. So talking about childhood lymphomas and their symptoms, I'm Dr. David Hill."