The Staging and Treatment of Hodgkin's Disease

Abstract

THE management of Hodgkin's disease remains a complex and evolving subject. Ten or even five years ago increasingly favorable survival rates based on increasingly aggressive radiation and chemotherapy would have been a reasonable prediction. Although there is no reason to question the validity of an optimistic attitude, it was not anticipated that radical treatment (particularly combined treatment with total nodal irradiation and multiagent chemotherapy) would carry substantial risks from serious sepsis and second neoplasms. Thus, a more conservative approach to Hodgkin's disease, tailoring treatment to the needs of the individual patient, is more appropriate in 1978 than it would have . . .