ABSTRACT
Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), belonging to the neoplastic diseases of the lymphatic tissue, is one of the few curable cancers in adults. Thomas Hodgkin first described the disease in 1832 in his historic paper entitled ‘On Some Morbid Appearances of the Exorbant Glands and Spleen’.1 About 70 years later, Carl Sternberg (1898) and Dorothy Reed (1902) contributed the first definitive microscopic descriptions of the pathognomonic Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg (RS) cells.2,3 At that time, Dorothy Reed wrote ‘the treatment for this disease is dismal. All patients die within 3-4 years. Even if you resect the tumor totally, it will recur and grow even faster than before…’. Hodgkin already assumed an autonomous lymphatic process rather than an inflammatory condition or an infectious disease like tuberculosis. However, despite the evidence for the malignant nature of HL over the last century, the detection of the malignant clonal origin of RS cells as germinal center-derived B lym-4,5
Since these first descriptions of HL, therapeutic strategies have developed remarkably from surgery, herbs, and arsenic acid to sophisticated stage-and risk-adapted treatment regimens including modern polychemotherapy and radiation therapy. To date, about 80 percent of patients achieve long-term disease-free survival, rendering this entity one of the most curable human cancers. It is therefore of pivotal importance to maintain the high standard of cure rates over all stages reached but at the same time to reduce toxicity.
