[Hodgkin's disease in children. Current therapeutic strategies]

The observed cure rates in childhood Hodgkin's disease (85 to 95%) and the knowledge of late complications of treatments, radiotherapy as well as chemotherapy, lead to studies aiming at decreasing the treatment burden without compromising these good results. An international workshop helped to make an update of the different presently used strategies. It appeared that the benefit and the risks of the staging laparotomy are still controversial, though most of the teams are now omitting this procedure. Different options have been selected in decreasing the treatments. If a few teams choose to treat by chemotherapy alone, the majority prefer to treat by combined modality therapy allowing to reduce at the same time the intensity of the radiation therapy (doses and fields) and of the chemotherapy (use of chemotherapy devoid of procarbazine and alkylating agents for the favorable cases). The presented french study shows the feasibility of such a strategy.