P L A I N L A N G U A G E S U M M A R Y
Comparison of the two international standards of chemother
apy for patients with early unfavourable or advanced stage H
odgkin
lymphoma
Hodgkin lymphoma is a malignancy of the lymphatic system. It i
s one of the most common cancers in young adults, particularly in
their third decade of life, but it occurs also in children and elde
rly people. Within the last fifty years it has become one of the m
ost
curable forms of cancer. To find the best treatment with the great
est efficacy and least toxicity is the most important challenge in
treating Hodgkin lymphoma. There are two international sta
ndards for the treatment of early unfavourable or advanced st
age Hodgkin
lymphoma: chemotherapy with escalated BEACOPP (bleomycin/eto
poside/doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide/vincristine/procarba
zine/
prednisone) regimen initiated by the German Hodgkin Study G
roup (GHSG) and chemotherapy with ABVD (doxorubicin/ bleomycin/
vinblastine/ dacarbazine) regimen, which is widely used becau
se it has been proven to be effective, well tolerated and easy t
o administer.
We aimed to clarify the advantages and disadvantages of both t
reatments by comparing the chance of survival (overall survival
), the
chance of recurrence of the tumour and the frequencies of adverse e
vents after treatment in patients with early unfavourable s
tage or
advanced stage Hodgkin lymphoma.
We found five eligible trials but one was unpublished. These t
rials included only adult patients (16 to 60 years of age). We incl
uded 2868
patients in our review. The analysis shows a better chance of av
oiding recurrence of the tumour in patients who received chemoth
erapy
including escalated BEACOPP. In those with early unfavourabl
e disease, 22 patients (95% confidence interval (CI) 18 to 29) had t
o
be treated to prevent one tumour recurring within 3.5 years; i
n patients with advanced disease, 7 patients (95% CI 6 to 10) had
to
be treated to prevent such an event within 10 years. Treatment
with escalated BEACOPP caused a higher risk of adverse events s
uch
as anaemia (10 times higher) and thrombocytopenia (19 times hig
her). However, this did not lead to an increased treatment-rela
ted
mortality. In addition, there was an eight times higher risk
of secondary acute myeloid leukaemia or myelodysplastic synd
romes in
patients receiving escalated BEACOPP, but the total number of
secondary malignancies did not differ statistically within bo
th treatment
groups. Differences regarding overall survival could not be s
hown, which might be caused by the short follow-up time (less than
five
years) of three trials included. Since more than 70% of HL patie
nts survived the first five years due to chemotherapy, the diffe
rentiation
between regimens might needs more time to become apparent. Th
us, a longer follow-up and the inclusion of the recently closed
EORTC 20012 trial will allow a more definitive answer with res
pect to OS.
Nevertheless, these results can only be extrapolated to adul
t patients (16 to 60 years of age) with early unfavourable or ad
vanced staged
HL. Older patients experience more severe treatment-related
toxicity and a higher mortality during treatment than younge
r patients,
which leads to poorer survival outcome in the elderly. The rand
omised HD9elderly trial examined BEACOPP baseline compared
to
COPP/ABVD in patients older than 65 years and showed no stati
stically significant difference for overall survival (50% overa
ll survival
rate at five years in both arms), but an important higher rate of
toxic deaths, 21% compared to 8%, after treatment with BEACOP
P
baseline. Therefore, treatment approaches for elderly pati
ents are different from these for the adults
≤
60 years and the results of thisreview are only relevant for adult patients younger than 60 y
ears of age.