Current directions in the treatment of early stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma
D.J. Straus
Attending Physician Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Professor of Clinical
Medicine Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, USA
Radiation therapy (RT) alone and the combined modalities therapies (CMT) of chemotherapy and RT for early stage Hodgkin lymphoma have achieved excellent results for early stage Hodgkin lymphoma for over thirty years. A major concern has been the late toxicities of treatment most of which are attributable to the RT. Recently several studies have suggested that chemotherapy alone is a reasonable treatment option for patients with early stage non-bulky Hodgkin lymphoma. At the present time this does not seem to be appropriate for patients with early stage bulky disease (mediastinal mass > 1/3rd the thoracic diameter or peripheral nodal mass > 10 cm, since RT to regions of tumor bulk in combination with chemotherapy has been demonstrated to reduce the risk of recurrence.