Throughout our 50 cancer centers across Georgia, Northside Hospital Cancer Institute (NHCI) offers our patients access to the most advanced cancer treatment options available today. Along with leading edge technologies, Northside Hospital Cancer Institute provides compassionate and personalized care for our patients.
We understand there is no one-size-fits-all to cancer treatment – cancer treatment options vary by cancer, condition and each patient, even those diagnosed with the same type of cancer respond differently to cancer treatments. Northside Hospital Cancer Institute is Georgia’s leader in cancer surgeries. Our multidisciplinary team of cancer specialists work individually with each patient to develop an evidence-based treatment plan designed to meet each cancer patient’s needs so they can get back to living their lives to the fullest.
Blood and bone marrow transplants, also know as cellular therapy, is a treatment that harnesses the immune system to fight cancer using cells from the patient or from healthy donors.
A stem cell transplant, or bone marrow transplant, is a procedure to replace damaged or destroyed bone marrow with healthy bone marrow stem cells. Doctors also treat some blood diseases with stem cell transplants.
A stem cell transplant is usually done after chemotherapy and radiation is complete. The stem cells are delivered into your bloodstream usually through a tube called a central venous catheter. The process is similar to getting a blood transfusion. The stem cells travel through the blood into the bone marrow. Most times, no surgery is needed.
Bone marrow transplants are typically a treatment option for patients with leukemia, multiple myeloma, or some types of lymphoma.
The Blood and Marrow Transplant (BMT) Program at Northside Hospital Cancer Institute (NHCI) is one of the largest and most comprehensive programs of its kind in the Southeast and has among the best survival rates in the nation for bone marrow transplants.
There are many different types of cancer drugs and ways to use them to treat cancer patients. Some drugs, such as chemotherapy, are designed specifically to kill cancer cells. While targeted therapy may use cancer drugs to kill cancer cells or to turn off the process in cancer cells that causes them to grow and divide (targeted therapy).Another treatment, called hormone therapy uses drugs to block or change the way that hormones work to fight cancer cells.
Find a Northside infusion center near you and learn more about the cancer drug therapies available.
Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that relies on the body's infection-fighting system (immune system). It uses substances made by the body or in a lab to help the immune system work harder or in a more targeted way to fight cancer. This helps your body get rid of cancer cells.
Learn more about the Northside’s Immunotherapy Program.
T-cells are a type of lymphocyte, or white blood cells that make up part of a patient’s immune system. T-cells help the body fight diseases or harmful substances, such as bacteria or viruses. However, T-cells are not very good at recognizing and fighting cancer cells.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy designed to help the body’s own immune system recognize and fight cancer cells. It is one of the most promising immunotherapy treatments available. Northside Hospital Cancer Institute is among select centers in the country offering chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for treating some patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).
Learn more about CAR T-Cell Therapy at Northside Hospital Cancer Institute.
Palliative care is specialized, comprehensive treatment of the discomfort, symptoms and stress of a serious illness. The goal of Northside Hospital’s Palliative Care Team is to improve the quality of life for patients, their families and caregivers. Palliative care services provide relief from pain, nausea, shortness of breath, anxiety and other distressing symptoms. Palliative care can also help patients and their families deal with complex decisions, and cope with the side effects of medical and cancer treatments.
Northside’s Palliative Care Team is interdisciplinary, combining the expertise and knowledge of physicians, nurses, clinical social workers, case managers and chaplains. The team collaborates with a patient’s personal medical team to implement a comprehensive treatment plan addressing physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs. Palliative care is available to patients at all three Northside Hospital campuses and can be incorporated at anytime during treatment, regardless of the stage of illness, and can be offered alongside life-prolonging treatment such as chemotherapy.
Palliative care services offered at Northside Hospital include:
To learn more about the Northside Hospital palliative care services available at Northside Hospital Atlanta, Northside Hospital Cherokee, Northside Hospital Forsyth and Northside Hospital Gwinnett, patients and caregivers should contact their doctor or other health care provider.
Radiation therapy (also known as radiation oncology) is one of the most commonly used cancer treatments. It involves the use of special equipment to deliver high doses of radiation in order to destroy cancer cells.
Northside Hospital Cancer Institute offers more radiation oncology centers and advanced radiation therapy treatment units than any other hospital system in Georgia. Newly designed linear accelerators with stereotactic capabilities allow us to treat small tumors with unprecedented precision, whether they are in the body or the brain. This technology, combined with our expert, board-certified radiation oncologists, accessible at multiple locations across Georgia, makes Northside a dominant provider of radiation therapy.
Learn more about the services and treatment options our Radiation Oncology Program offers.
Clinical trials are studies that involve people and are a critical part of oncology research. These studies test new ways to prevent, detect, diagnose or treat cancer. Northside Hospital Cancer Institute’s Research Program is one of the largest community-based oncology/hematology programs in the nation.
It is one of only a handful of programs that offers Phase I-IV clinical research. People who take part in cancer clinical trials have an opportunity to contribute to scientists’ knowledge about cancer and to help in the development of improved cancer treatments. They also receive state-of-the-art care from cancer experts.
Most people with cancer will undergo some form of surgery as part of their treatment. Surgery may be used in diagnosing cancer, staging cancer, treating cancer, debulking (or surgical removal of as much of a tumor as possible), relieving cancer symptoms, and even preventing cancer.
When diagnosing cancer, a physician typically performs a biopsy, or extracts a sample of tissue from the suspicious area, to determine if it's cancer or not; the cancer and some of the adjacent tissue are usually removed during this surgical procedure and can be performed on an outpatient basis. Cancer treatment surgery also can be helpful in collecting information to predict whether or not the cancer will come back.
