About 75 percent of all newly diagnosed people with Hodgkin's disease can be cured with current radiotherapy and combination chemotherapy .
The most important factors for determining the prognosis and outlining treatment plans are the stage of disease, the presence or absence of symptoms and the presence of large masses. Other factors include the patient's age, the extent of splenic disease found during a laparotomy , the extent of abdominal lymph node involvement and the results of a laboratory test measuring the erythrocyte (red cell) sedimentation rate.
Radiation Radiation therapy is considered the treatment of choice for those with favorable localized
disease—Stage I and Stage II, with no large masses and no symptoms.
Chemotherapy For all other patients, chemotherapy is required. Combined radiation and
chemotherapy is commonly used for large individual tumor masses, so-called bulky disease. Even patients who have recurrent disease after initial treatment with radiation have an excellent chance for a prolonged disease-free survival with combination chemotherapy. Patients with recurrent disease after chemotherapy have a less favorable prognosis, but long remissions have been reported after more chemotherapy or intensive chemotherapy and radiation therapy followed by bone marrow transplantation.
