Management
Patients with early stage disease (IA or IIA) are effectively treated with radiation therapy or chemotherapy. The choice of treatment depends on the age, sex, bulk and the histological subtype of the disease. Patients with later disease (III, IVA, or IVB) are treated with combination chemotherapy alone. Patients of any stage with a large mass in the chest are usually treated with combined chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
| ABVD | Stanford V | BEACOPP |
|---|---|---|
| Currently, the ABVD chemotherapy regimen is the standard treatment of Hodgkin's disease in the US. The abbreviation stands for the four drugs Adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine. Developed in Italy in the 1970s, the ABVD treatment typically takes between six and eight months, although longer treatments may be required. | The newer Stanford V regimen is typically only half as long as the ABVD but involves a more intensive chemotherapy schedule and incorporates radiation therapy. In a randomized controlled study in Italy, Stanford V was inferior to ABVD. | BEACOPP is a form of treatment for stages > II mainly used in Europe. The cure rate with the BEACOPP esc. regimen is approximately 10–15% higher than with standard ABVD in advanced stages. This was shown in a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine (Diehl et al.), but US physicians still favor ABVD, maybe because some physicians think that BEACOPP induces more secondary leukemia. However, this seems negligible compared to the higher cure rates. BEACOPP is more expensive because of the requirement for concurrent treatment with GCSF to increase production of white blood cells. Currently, the German Hodgkin Study Group tests 8 cycles (8x) BEACOPP esc vs. 6x BEACOPP esc vs. 8x BEACOPP-14 baseline (HD15-trial). |
| Doxorubicin | Doxorubicin | Doxorubicin |
| Bleomycin | Bleomycin | Bleomycin |
| Vinblastine | Vinblastine, Vincristine | Vincristine |
| Dacarbazine | Mechlorethamine | Cyclophosphamide, Procarbazine |
| Etoposide | Etoposide | |
| Prednisone | Prednisone |
It should be noted that the common non-Hodgkin's treatment, rituximab (which is a monoclonal antibody against CD20) is not routinely used to treat Hodgkin's lymphoma due to the lack of CD20 surface antigens in most cases. The use of rituximab in Hodgkin's lymphoma, including the lymphocyte predominant subtype has been reviewed recently.
Although increased age is an adverse risk factor for Hodgkin's lymphoma, in general elderly patients without major comorbidities are sufficiently fit to tolerate standard therapy, and have a treatment outcome comparable to that of younger patients. However, the disease is a different entity in older patients and different considerations enter into treatment decisions.
For Hodgkin's lymphomas, radiation oncologists typically use external beam radiation therapy (sometimes shortened to EBRT or XRT). Radiation oncologists deliver external beam radiation therapy to the lymphoma from a machine called a linear accelerator. Patients usually describe treatments as painless and similar to getting an X-ray. Treatments last less than 30 minutes each, every day but Saturday and Sunday.
For lymphomas, there are a few different ways radiation oncologists target the cancer cells. Involved field radiation is when the radiation oncologists give radiation only to those parts of the patient's body known to have the cancer. Very often, this is combined with chemotherapy. Radiation therapy directed above the diaphragm to the neck, chest and/or underarms is called mantle field radiation. Radiation to below the diaphragm to the abdomen, spleen and/or pelvis is called inverted-Y field radiation. Total nodal irradiation is when the therapist gives radiation to all the lymph nodes in the body to destroy cells that may have spread.
Read more about this topic: Hodgkin's Lymphoma
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