ABVD Without Radiation for Newly Diagnosed Pediatric Patients with Hodgkin Lymphoma: A Single Center Retrospective Analysis of 22 Consecutive Patients
Background
Hodgkin lymphoma is the most common type of cancer that affects adolescents in the United States. Thankfully, Hodgkin lymphoma is very sensitive to both chemotherapy and radiation and therefore the majority of children diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma are cured when treated with both those treatments. Unfortunately, radiation therapy has many short and long-term side effects. The most significant risk associated with radiation is the potential development of additional cancers, with nearly 20-30% of women treated for Hodgkin lymphoma with radiation developing breast cancer in their lifetime. For these reasons, clinical trials in adults have started to avoid radiation entirely for certain Hodgkin lymphoma patients but the pediatric community has been slow to adopt this practice. We have eliminated radiation from the treatment regimen for all newly diagnosed Hodgkin lymphoma patients that have been treated at the University of California, San Francisco since 2010.
Project Goal
During the past five years, we have treated 22 consecutive Hodgkin lymphoma patients with an identical regimen of chemotherapy called ABVD without any use of radiation and 21 of 22 patients achieved remission, thereby avoiding the side effects of radiation entirely. We plan on collecting all the necessary information from the electronic medical record in an online database called REDCap, carrying out a blinded review of the results and will write up this experience for publication. The goal of this project is to raise the possibility that radiation therapy can be eliminated for the majority of pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma patients and thereby reduce the long-term toxicities associated with radiation.
Publications
