Advances in the treatment of Hodgkin's disease

Through the careful application of appropriate staging procedures and treatment modalities, at the beginning of the 1990s about 75% of patients with Hodgkin's disease can expect long-term remission or even cure. At present, radiotherapy remains the best therapeutic option for localized stages while advanced disease is cured by chemotherapy alone or chemotherapy combined with irradiation. In this decade, the challenge in the management of Hodgkin's disease will probably be represented by an optimal use of reasonably short-term chemotherapy regimens combined with limited-field irradiation in early stages and by an accurate evaluation of the best chemotherapy regimens for advanced disease. In the search for the optimal approaches to improve current therapeutic results, appropriate considerations should be given to the identification of effective treatment modalities with a minimum amount of acute and late toxicity.