Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation - Blog Science Connections

Treating Advanced Hodgkin's Disease With
Intensive Chemoradiotherapy and
Autologous Bone Marrow
Transplantation
S. H. Wolff, G. L Phillips, J. W. Fay, C. F. LeMaistre, R. H. Herzig,
and G. P. Herzig
Although substantial progress has been made in treating patients with
advanced Hodgkin's disease with combination chemotherapy, the patient with
recurrent disease remains a challenge. In the patient whose frontline chemotherapy
has failed, therapeutic options include retreatment with the initial
regimen (if the disease-free interval was greater than 1 year) or non-crossresistant
chemotherapy (if the disease-free interval was less than 1 year) (1,2).
Although complete remissions can be achieved, few patients achieve durable
remission, especially if their initial disease-free interval was short. For those
patients whose second-line therapy fails, the long-term outlook is bleak.
One of the proven methods of improving the effectiveness of antineoplastic
therapy is dose intensification (3,4). We have now treated 27 patients with
advanced Hodgkin's disease whose former extensive chemotherapy failed. We
report here that durable complete remission can be achieved in a moderate
proportion of patients with Hodgkin's disease with the use of intensive
chemoradiotherapy and autologous bone marrow transplantation.
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