Therapy of Hodgkin's lymphoma in clinical practice: A retrospective long-term follow-up analysis

Treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) is perceived to be relatively straightforward. Consequently, patients are not usually referred to hemato-oncologically specialized centres and are treated locally instead. Comprehensive findings beyond prospective controlled trials are therefore lacking. Clinical data of 209 patients who had received a HL diagnosis were collected. A total of 7 patients received radiotherapy (RT) alone (3%), 75 (35%) were treated with a combination of chemotherapy (CT) and RT and 127 patients received CT alone mainly doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine and dacarbazine (ABVD)]. Complete response (CR) following first-line treatment was achieved in 178 patients (85%) and in 195 (93%) after salvage treatment. Favorable disease (p=0.000359), limited-stage disease (p=0.0003), involvement of lymph nodes above the diaphragm (p=0.05) and absence of mediastinal bulky tumor involvement positively affected the CR rate following first-line treatment. Out of the 195 patients that achieved CR, 31 relapsed. Male gender (p=0.043) and age over 45 years (p=0.047) were significantly associated with an increased incidence of relapse. Age at diagnosis was the key factor affecting long-term outcome. The event-free survival (EFS) projected at 120 months was 80 and 57% for patients younger and older than 45 years, respectively (p=0.022). The overall survival (OS) projected at 120 months was 92 and 38% for patients younger and older than 45 years, respectively (p=0.00561). A second neoplasia was diagnosed in 8 patients. The development of a tumor in 4 cases (breast, lung and thyroid cancer) was likely RT-related. Only 1 patient not receiving RT developed acute myeloid leukemia. The EFS and OS of the 141 early-stage patients treated with CT + RT (n=62) or with CT alone (n=79) were not statistically different.