%0 Journal Article
%T Successful Treatment in Children with Hodgkin Lymphoma in Greece; A 20-Year Experience in a Single Institution
%A Apostolos Pourtsidis
%A Dimitrios Doganis
%A Margarita Baka
%A Despina Bouhoutsou
%A Maria Varvoutsi
%A Maria Synodinou
%A Katerina Strantzia
%A Helen Kosmidis
%J Lymphoma
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/215868
%X During the last 30 years, combined chemotherapy regimens with radiotherapy or not significantly improved the prognosis for patients with Hodgkin lymphoma. We retrospectively studied 58 children (35 boys and 23 girls) with Hodgkin lymphoma who were treated at our institution during the period 1987¨C2006 and we correlated age, sex, stage, histology, and therapy with the outcome of patients. Of our patients, 9 children were 8 years old or younger. Nodular sclerosis was the predominant histology subtype (69%), whereas 26 patients (45%) had advanced disease (stage III or IV). Chemotherapy (CT) with various drug combinations, according to the period of treatment plus low-dose involved field radiation therapy (IFRT), was used in all patients. Five children experienced relapse and in 3 other patients second or third malignancies were documented. The overall survival was found to be 98%. No factors related to the outcome could be detected. The prognosis of children with Hodgkin lymphoma is excellent with CT combined with low dose IFRT but in long-time survivors late effects of the combined modality treatment are still issues of major concern. Longer followup of a greater number of patients is necessary to detect prognostic factors related to the outcome of children with Hodgkin lymphoma and to identify some patients who would be treated without radiation. 1. Introduction In Europe and USA Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is the sixth most common type of cancer in children following leukemia, CNS tumors, neuroblastoma, nephroblastoma, and non Hodgkin lymphomas, accounting for approximately 5% of all childhood malignancies. The prevalence of disease varies considerably with age, gender, nationality, and histology subtype. According to data of International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) for children younger than 15 years, the incidence is 5.5 cases per million but for those aged 15¨C20 years the incidence reaches 12.1 cases per million. In Western Asia (extending from the Mediterranean to Northwest India) the incidence in children <15 years old is consistently higher than 7 cases per million [1]. In Greece, the annual incidence is 7.2 per million children [2]. The disease presents a characteristically bimodal curve with an early peak in adolescence and a second peak in adults aged above 50 years old, whereas is very rare in children under 5 years of age. Patients (pts) with HL commonly present with cervical or supraclavicular lymphadenopathy and with mediastinal involvement in most of them. Treatment is largely determined by disease stage, patient¡¯s age at diagnosis, the
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/lymph/2012/215868/