ABSTRACT
Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) 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 Absorbent 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 (H-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 had already assumed that it was an autonomous lymphatic process rather than an inflammatory condition or an infectious disease like tuberculosis. Despite fragments of evidence for the malignant nature of HL for a very long period of time, the malignant clonal origin of H-RS cells from germinal centre-derived B-lymphocytes was demonstrated only very recently.4,5
Since these first descriptions, therapeutic strategies for HL have developed remarkably from surgery, herbs and arsenic acid to sophisticated stage-and risk-adapted treatment regimens including modern polychemotherapy and radiotherapy. To date, about 80 per cent 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 reached over all stages and at the same time to reduce the toxicity of treatment.
