The Past: What We Have Learned in the Last Decade

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) has become a curable malignancy for most patients during the last decades. However, many controversies still exist on the optimal strategy of how to cure our patients. The key question is how to balance the risks and toxicities of chemotherapy and radiotherapy against the need for a definite treatment for early or advanced-stage HL patients. However, although many studies have been conducted and reported during the past decade, interpretation of their results and treatment recommendations might vary significantly in different countries. For example, early-stage HL might be divided into two different subgroups: early favorable and early unfavorable or not. Treatment of early-stage HL might include radiotherapy ("combined modality") or not. Depending on the extent of radiotherapy, the schedule and number of chemotherapy cycles are also questioned. For advanced-stage HL, the situation is not much different. Compared with ABVD (adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine), the more aggressive escalated BEACOPP regimen (bleomycin, etoposide, adriamycin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, procarbazine, and prednisone) is highly effective, but also raises concern due to excessive toxicity. Thus, there is a controversy about the standard of care for advanced HL patients. Because no mature results comparing these approaches with each other are currently available, it remains our duty to share the preliminary information with our patients and to figure out the most appropriate individual treatment strategy. Of course, the discussion of these issues is influenced by experiences and preferences. In contrast, in this article, we will try to focus on the available scientific evidence regarding the first-line treatment of HL. Of course, focusing on the last decade necessarily exclude the most recent results from ongoing studies. Thus, even though this article comprises treatment recommendations for HL patients, the best treatment certainly still is within properly designed prospective clinical trials.