Key pre-salvage treatment risk factors that were almost consistently found to independently prognosticate outcome in Classical Hodgkin's lymphoma: the Lymphoma Study Association guidelines for relapsed and refractory adult patients eligible for transplant open-access paper. doi:10.3324/haematol.2012.072090 Manuscript received on January 15, 2013. Manuscript accepted on May 6, 2013
.beThe Hodgkin's Lymphoma Committee of the Lymphoma Study Association (LYSA) gathered in 2012 to prepare guidelines on the management of transplant-eligible patients with relapsing or refractory Hodgkin's lymphoma. The working group is made up of a multidisciplinary panel of experts with a significant background in Hodgkin's lymphoma. Each member of the panel of experts provided an interpretation of the evidence and a systematic approach to obtain consensus was used. Grades of recommendation were not required since levels of evidence are mainly based on phase II trials or standard practice. Data arising from randomized trials are emphasized. The final version was endorsed by the scientific council of the LYSA. The expert panel recommends a risk-adapted strategy (conventional treatment, or single/double transplantation and/or radiotherapy) based on three risk factors at progression (primary refractory disease, remission duration < 1 year, stage III/IV), and an early evaluation of salvage chemosensitivity, including 18 fluorodeoxy glucose-positron emission tomography interpreted according to the Deauville scoring system. Most relapsed or refractory Hodgkin's lymphoma patients chemosensitive to salvage should receive high-dose therapy and autologous stem-cell transplantation as standard. Efforts should be made to increase the proportion of chemosensitive patients by alternating non-cross-resistant chemotherapy lines or exploring the role of novel drugs.
ABSTRACT
© F e r r a t a S t o r t i F o u n d a t i o nN o c o m m e r c i a l u s e relapsing and refractory HL are primary refractoriness, short time to HL relapse, and advanced clinical stage at relapse. 2,12,13 The expert panel recommends using these robust prognostic factors to stratify patients into three risk groups (Table 1). There have been inconsistent reports of other predictive risk factors, sometimes with independent value, such as anemia, poor performance status (PS), presence of B symptoms, extranodal relapse, relapse in previous radiation field, age, or bulky disease, but the latter were not retained by the expert panel to serve in the risk group definition. 2,14,15 Primary refractoriness is defined either by progression at any time during chemotherapy or radiotherapy (RT) and up to three months after the end of treatment, and/or by persistence of a PET positive residual mass, using the quantitative 5-point scale Deauville score (DS) for PET interpretation. Using these criteria, a positive FDG-PET (i.e. DS 4 or 5) after 3-4 cycles of ABVD for supra-diaphragmatic HL, and after four cycles of BEACOP Pesc or ABVD for advanced HL, is considered as primary refractory disease...