[Treating Hodgkin's disease: for whom the more means better?]

During the last half century, our knowledge and expertise increased, and Hodgkin's disease became one of the most curable malignant diseases. However, our results are still not satisfactory in the case of advanced stage. Apart from standard chemotherapy regimens, several other, so-called intensive first line therapy schedules have been tried, whose common characteristic is that more antineoplastic drugs within a reasonably shorter period and sometimes with increased dose had been administered. Out of these regimens, escalated dose BEACOPP (bleomycin, etoposide, adriamycin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, procarbazine, prednisolone), the therapy yielding the best results and inciting hot debates in the literature is discussed here in detail. Though many questions related to BEACOPP scheme are still unanswered and at present it is not recommended for use in first line therapy except for trials, it seems that patients under 60 years of age, with advanced stage disease having poor prognosis, may benefit from this treatment.