ASCO Audio Journal of Oncology – July 1st 2006

REFERENCE: Education Session: Saturday June 3rd, 2006 ASCO Annual Meeting, June 2-6, Atlanta
Joachim Yahalom, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York
Should patients with low-risk early stage Hodgkin’s disease be treated with combined modality treatment? Or can most of them receive chemotherapy alone, and have radiation only in the relatively unlikely event of recurrent disease? Should transplantation be considered? These issues were debated at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Atlanta by George Canellos (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston) and Joachim Yahalom (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York). With equal short-term efficacy using either short courses of ABVD chemotherapy followed by involved-field radiotherapy, or curative doses of ABVD alone, the discussions addressed the long-term risks of second tumors and cardiac morbidity, side effects that occasionally resulted from older regimens including whole-body radiation.