Staging laparotomy for Hodgkin's disease.

We reviewed 39 patients with untreated Hodgkin's disease who underwent staging laparotomy and such cases in the English literature over the past two-and-a-half years. In the group of institutions in our compilation, the accuracies of clinically positive and negative judgments of liver involvement were 28 per cent and 95.4 per cent respectively, while in our institution the accuracies were 100 per cent and 95 percent respectively. The accuracies of the clinically positive and negative determinations of splenic involvement were 61.2 per cent and 67.3 per cent respectively after histological examination, whereas we had accuracies of 100 per cent and 74 per cent respectively. The accuracies of the clinically positive and negative determination of lymph nodes were 72.1 per cent and 86.7 per cent respectively, whereas the results were 70.6 per cent and 100 per cent respectively in our 39 cases. The percentage of complications was 10 per cent and the mortality rate was 0.9 per cent among 719 staging laparotomies. The common complications were atelectasis, pneumonia, wound infection and dehiscence, abscess, intestinal obstruction and thrombocytosis. We think more aggressive staging laparotomy should be performed for Hodgkin's disease under one surgeon or one surgical team.