Extended Radiotherapy in Advanced Hodgkin's Disease: Hematologic Aspects

THE LITERATURE convincingly substantiates the argument that clinically localized Hodgkin's disease, in the absence of constitutional symptoms, is controllable for prolonged periods if not curable by intensive irradiation. The frequency of survival at ten years following treatment is appreciable. 1-4 Perhaps more important is the comparability of the survival curve at five and particularly at ten years after therapy 3 to the expected survival curve for the control population. It has also been observed that the clinical pattern of spread is predictable 5 with new manifestations of disease showing a tendency to occur in areas immediately adjacent to regions of initial involvement. This has encouraged the so-called prophylactic irradiation of lymphatic sites adjacent to the clinically involved nodes. Although the value of this approach has not yet been confirmed by controlled investigations, there is suggestive merit to the concept in the reported results. 2 An obvious extension of the above