[Prognostic factors of malignant lymphoma]

Advances in staging and more refined radiation techniques and the combination chemotherapy have lead marked improvement of survival of patients with Hodgkin's disease and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The important prognostic factors used for choosing treatment programs are stage, histology, tumor bulk and the site of involvement for patients with early stage disease. Tumor bulk is considered as an important variable when patients are treated with radiation therapy alone. However, aggressive staging and effective therapy tend to obscure the differences in survival and relapse-free survival that would be observed in untreated patients and may be difficult to identify prognostic factors.