[Splenectomy in Hodgkin's disease--indication and results (author's transl)]

The spleen is involved in 20-30 percent of patients with Hodgkin's disease. Involvement of the spleen cannot be excluded with reliability by radiological procedures or clinical chemistry. Therefore laparotomy and splenectomy are recommended as staging and therapeutic measures. In the authors's material, splenectomy showed splenic lesions in 9 out of 21 patients, mostly unexpected. Splenectomy is always indicated in stage II and should be taken into consideration in individual cases of stages I and III, too.