Click to Enlarge: Characteristics of ADSMs who deployed following HL or NHL diagnosis. Source: Journal of Clinical Medicine
BETHESDA, MD — A cancer diagnosis has often been viewed as the end of a military career, particularly for servicemembers whose duties require deployment to austere or remote environments. A new study suggested, however, that for some survivors of lymphoma, cancer treatment does not necessarily mean the end of operational service—and provided objective evidence that can help military clinicians counsel servicemembers and commanders about returning to duty.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, found that nearly 1 in 6 previously deployed servicemembers with lymphoma returned to deployment after their diagnosis. Furthermore, many deployed more than once, often for extended periods and to multiple locations, suggesting that a significant subset of lymphoma survivors were able to meet the demands of military service.1
“Lymphoma is the most common blood cancer that we see in active-duty service members,” said lead author Kyle Yuan, MD, a hematology/oncology fellow and U.S. Army captain at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The average age of servicemembers in the study was about 28.
Once military personnel complete treatment and enter remission, Yuan said, and they and their commanders often ask the same question: Can they still do their jobs, and can they still deploy? “I mean, it’s certainly life-changing, but is it career-ending?” he noted.
To help answer that question, the researchers identified 866 active-duty servicemembers diagnosed with Hodgkin or non-Hodgkin lymphoma between 2001 and 2022 who had deployed before their diagnosis. They deliberately limited the analysis to previously deployed personnel, because about 38% of servicemembers never deploy during their military careers for reasons unrelated to health, such as occupational specialty, assignment or career timing. Including those servicemembers could have made the results more difficult to interpret, because a lack of deployment would not necessarily reflect the effects of lymphoma, Yuan explained.
Among the previously deployed servicemembers, 119, or 13.7%, deployed again after their lymphoma diagnosis. About half of those who redeployed did so at least twice, the study found, and the median deployment lasted approximately 1.1 years. About one-fifth deployed to six or more locations during a single deployment. “Not only were these servicemembers able to deploy,” Yuan said, but they were also able to sustain multiple, prolonged and geographically diverse deployments.
The rate redeployment was higher among those with Hodgkin lymphoma—18.9% compared to 8.0% of those with non-Hodgkin lymphoma—a finding which was not unexpected, Yuan said. Patients with Hodgkin lymphoma in the study tended to be younger, often in their 20s, and Hodgkin lymphoma generally has excellent outcomes, with overall survival on the order of 90% to 95%. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, on the other hand, encompasses a broad range of diseases, from relatively indolent lymphomas to highly aggressive cancers with very different prognoses and treatment courses.
The average interval between lymphoma diagnosis and subsequent deployment was approximately five years. But Yuan cautioned that this should not be viewed as a recovery period; most patients recover from treatment within weeks to months, he said. Instead, the 5-year interval more closely reflects the period of closer surveillance after treatment, when the risk of relapse falls substantially.
Under DoD policy, lymphoma generally precludes deployment unless a servicemember receives a waiver, Yuan told U.S. Medicine. The waiver process considers the individual’s risk of recurrence, medical status and the capabilities available at the deployment location.
A servicemember assigned to a large military installation with extensive medical resources presents a different risk profile from someone deploying to a remote location with limited access to specialty care, imaging or laboratory testing, Yuan said. Clinicians also consider whether the servicemember remains in remission, has lingering effects of treatment or requires medications or monitoring that cannot be provided during deployment.
All 119 servicemembers who returned to deployment were alive at last follow-up. Yuan noted, however, that this should not be interpreted as a survival rate, because surviving long enough and remaining healthy enough to deploy was a prerequisite for being included among those 119.
Still, the findings reflected advances in lymphoma treatment and survivorship. Treatment has moved away from some of the intensive chemotherapy and extended-field radiation approaches used decades ago toward more targeted and immune-based therapies, with more patients being cured and fewer experiencing long-term treatment effects. The military health system might provide additional advantages, including broad access to care and treatment at military facilities with academic-level oncology expertise, according to the report. Servicemembers also tended to begin their military careers relatively young and healthy and remain under structured medical surveillance.
The study has several limitations. Most notably, the researchers did not have a comparison group of previously deployed lymphoma survivors who did not redeploy, which would have enabled them to determine which characteristics best predicted whether a servicemember would return to deployment. The registry also lacked detailed clinical information, including specific treatment regimens, treatment response, relapse history, performance status and long-term treatment effects. The findings also cannot necessarily be generalized to veterans, civilians or military personnel who had never deployed.
Yuan said future research could compare servicemembers who returned to deployment with those who did not, though doing so will require better integration of clinical and career data, which are currently maintained in separate systems.
For now, Yuan said he hopes the findings will encourage clinicians to consider return-to-duty possibilities rather than automatically assuming a cancer diagnosis ends a service member’s career. “Don’t write them off,” he said.
- Yuan K, Rolwes JM, Darmon S, Rendo MJ, Fenderson JL, Dwarakanath A, Aden JK, Morris MJ, DeStefano CB. From Cure to Combat: Deployment After Lymphoma. J Clin Med. 2026 Jul 8;15(14):5327. doi: 10.3390/jcm15145327. PMID: 42513241; PMCID: PMC13410925.