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Hodgkin's disease survival by stage and age
B J Kennedy1, A M Fremgen, H R Menck
1Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons and the National Cancer Data Base, USA.
Objective:
Prior reports on Hodgkin's disease have suggested a biologic behavior difference between young and old patients. A study of 35,033 patients could confirm that older patients do not do as well as young patients regardless of age.
Methods:
The National Cancer Data Base provided data from U.S. tumor registries on 35,033 patients newly diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease from 1985 through 1994. For analysis the patients were divided into two time periods, 1985-1989 and 1990-1994. The earlier period provided survival data to assess the impact of age and stage.
Results:
The overall disease-specific, 5-year survival rate for the 1985-1989 period was 84.9%. For stages I and II, it reached almost 90%. For both observed survival based on all deaths and disease-specific survival, the duration of survival decreased with increasing age. This decrease with age occurred for all stages of the disease.
Conclusions:
The data reflect the actual status of management of Hodgkin's disease in the United States rather than the best attainable results. The decreasing survival with increasing age and in all stages further supports the concept of a difference in biologic behavior of Hodgkin's disease associated with age.