Treatment option overview How plasma cell neoplasms are treated There are treatments for all patients with plasma cell neoplasms. Surgery may be used in certain cases. Chemotherapy uses drugs to kill cancer cells. Chemotherapy may be taken by pill, or it may be put into the body by a needle in the vein or muscle. Chemotherapy is called a systemic treatment because the drug enters the bloodstream, travels through the body, and can kill cancer cells throughout the body.
Biological therapy tries to get the body to fight cancer.
It uses materials made by the body or made in a laboratory to boost, direct, or restore the body's natural defenses against disease. Bone marrow transplantation is used to replace the bone marrow with healthy bone marrow. First, all of the bone marrow in the body is destroyed with high doses of chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy. The healthy marrow from the donor is given to the patient through a needle in the vein to replace the marrow that was destroyed. A bone marrow transplant using marrow from a relative or unrelated person is called an allogeneic bone marrow transplant.