Chemotherapy or Combined Modality Treatment: The Optimal Treatment for Hodgkin's Disease

The high cure rates for patients with Hodgkin’s Disease (HD) in all prognostic groups during the last three decades have been paralleled in adult oncology only by the treatment success in testicular tumors in young men. From the 1950s to the 1970s, radiation therapy was the sole modality for treating HD, but during the 1980s polychemotherapy became an increasingly important tool in curative treatment with the advent of the mechlorethamine, vincristine, procarbazine, and prednisone (MOPP) and doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine (ABV) plus dacarbazine (ABVD) regimens. The shift of balance from radiation to chemotherapy was accelerated by the realization of the late, often fatal, complications due to radiation, including secondary solid tumors and cardiopulmonary toxicities in long-term survivors of HD [1,2].