[Bone localisation of Hodgkin's disease. A report on 13 cases (author's transl)]

The authors review 13 cases of bone localisation of Hodgkin's disease taken from 120 case-reports, and compare the findings with those reported in the published literature. The frequency of bone lesions in this series was 18%. Initial signs were clinical in one half of the cases and radiological or scintigraphic in the other half. Early diagnosis of bone lesions was more frequently made in this series than late discovery of bone locations; the lesions ware more frequently present in the spine, the pelvis, and the sternum; the usual appearance was osteolytic or mixed, lytic and condensed. Scintigraphy is a reliable early diagnostic procedure, as is medullary biopsy which has become essential for the investigation of extension of the lesions. An inflammatory syndrome is present in most cases. In this series, bone lesions usually were of haematogenic origin and were mainly of the scleronodular histological type. Definite recovery was obtained in more than half of the cases. In the other patients, the bone lesions coincided with a long disease course, were never the reason for great concern, and were never directly responsible for death in the 3 patients that died.