Outcome of Hodgkin's Disease in Children with Chemotherapy alone in a Resource Limited Country
Abstract
Background: Treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma involves both chemotherapy and radiotherapy. But radiotherapy in children is associated with risk of development of long-term complications like the development of second malignancy. Novel therapeutic strategies with combination chemotherapy without radiotherapy are being used to reduce such complications while maintaining the optimum response. Objective: To investigate the outcome of treatment of Hodgkin's Lymphoma with combination chemotherapy ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine) alone. Patients and methods: A quasi-experimental open label clinical study was done on 48 children with Hodgkin's lymphoma in the Paediatric Haemato-Oncology department of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) with eight cycle ABVD regime on an outpatient basis over a period of 8 months to see the outcome of treatment. Results: The mean age of the patients was 10.3 years (range 3-16). There were 42 males and 6 females. Mixed cellularity cHL was the commonest histological subtype observed 20/48 (42%) patients. Forty-two (88%) patients achieved complete response (CR), 5 (10%) had partial response (PR) and one patient did not respond at all. Fifteen patients (31%) are known to be dead and the rest are alive and tumour free. Median EFS and OS were not achieved. The EFS and OS at 5 years were 63% and 67% respectively. Conclusion: ABVD combination should be regarded at the present moment as the simplest and most effective drug therapy for treating childhood Hodgkin's disease.
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Copyright (c) 2017 ATM Atikur Rahman, Farida Yasmin, Momena Begum, Tanvir Ahammed, Afiqul Islam
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This is an open access article published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits its free use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, even used for commercial purposes, provided the original work is properly cited.