Prognostic factors in Hodgkin's disease. I. Analysis of histopathology, stage distribution and results of therapy.

An unselected material of 83 consecutive and previously untreated adult patients with Hodgkin's disease (HD) from the Stockholm area is presented. The distribution of patients according to age was characteristically bimodal. The histopathological subtypes were 16% lymphocyte predominance (LP), 33% nodular sclerosis (NS), 37% mixed cellularity (MC) and 11% lymphocyte depletion (LD). The patients were treated with aggressive megavoltage irradiation and multidrug chemotherapy. Major factors affecting prognosis were age, clinical stage and constitutional symptoms. Patients with LP and NS subtypes had only slightly better prognosis that patients classified as MC and LD. The overall survival was 68% at 41/2 years, which is close to that reported from other groups with similar composition of their materials with regard to age, histopathology and stage.