The challenge of new protocols for Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) treatment is to decrease the toxicity without impairing the results. The DH-II-90 protocol was designed to treat children and adolescents with HL. The objectives of this work were: 1) to assess the overall and event free survival of patients with newly diagnosed HL treated with the DH-II-90 protocol, 2) to assess the overall and event free survival by stage, age, presence of bulky disease, mediastinal mass, B symptoms, dose and type of radiotherapy, and 3) to describe late effects, data collected from the patients' charts. Sixty-eight patients with HL, from 0 to 21 years of age (median age 9 yr, 20F:48M) were treated with ABVD and involved-field radiotherapy for low-risk patients, and ABVD plus MOP or COP and extended field radiotherapy for high-risk patients. Stage distribution was: nine (13.2%) stage I A; 29 (42.6%) II A; five (7.4%) II B; nine (13.2%) III A; ten (14.7%) III B; two (2.9%) IV A and four (5.9%) IV B. The 10-year overall survival was 96.1% ± 3.8% for the low-risk group and 93.3% ± 4.5% for the high-risk group (p= 0.402). The 10-year event free survival was 88.9% ± 5.2% for high-risk and 86.5% ± 6.3% for low-risk patients (p= 0.969). The presence of mediastinal mass and more than 2100 cGy radiation doses had negative impact on event free survival (p= 0.020 and p= 0.014, respectively).Thyroid gland dysfunction was frequently observed and there were two cases of thyroid carcinoma. The DH-II-90 protocol is effective, but, due to the late effects presented by this group of patients, further modifications of the therapy schedule are required.
Hodgkin lymphoma; child; chemotherapy; radiotherapy; survival
