Hodgkin's lymphoma (Hodgkin's disease) - Symptoms and treatment. How to detect lymphoma?

Hodgkin lymphoma is one of the most frequent lymphomas in the world. Even it is frequent lymphoma, generally this malignancy still rare. It affects 2-3 person per 100 thousand.
About 40 % of this malignancy is associated with Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) infection commonly in teenage.
Hodgkin Lymphoma is classified two important categories. First is classical Hodgkin lymphoma, and nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma. 95 % of cases are classical form.
Most common sign of Hodgkin lymphoma is enlarged lymph nodes around neck. Or axillary region.
60-70 % of cases enlarged lymph nodes are noted around cervical area. This lymph nodes aren’t painful.
30% of cases are axillary lymph nodes. And around 50 % of cases mediastinal lymph nodes also involved.
Only 10-15 % of patients with Hodgkin Lymphoma have extranodal disease, and the commonly affected organs are bone, bone marrow, lung, and liver.
Other symptoms include:
Fevers, drenching night sweats and unintentional weight loss.
These symptoms aren’t specific for Hodgkin lymphoma and presence this symptoms doesn’t mean Hodgkin lymphoma itself.
This 3 symptoms collectively is called B symptoms.
Fever is considered temperature more than 38 c degree.
Weight loss of 10% or more of baseline weight in the previous 6 months.
Weight loss and fever are more important symptoms then night sweats isolated.
So, Night sweats alone do not confer an adverse prognosis.
Other symptoms include:
Pruritus, especially after bathing or after ingesting alcohol.
Fatigue.
Risk Factors for Hodgkin lymphoma include:
Being in early adulthood (aged 20–39 years) (most often) or late adulthood (aged 65 years and older) (less often).
Being male.
Having a previous infection with the Epstein-Barr virus in the teenage years or early childhood.
Having a first-degree relative with Hodgkin Lymphoma.
Diagnosis:
Hodgkin lymphoma cannot be diagnosed with a blood test.
Although the complete blood test count can have some role, the measures the levels of different cells in the blood.
For example, if the lymphoma invades the bone marrow (where new blood cells are made) a person might have anemia (not enough red blood cells). A high white blood cell count is another possible sign of Hodgkin Lymphoma, although it can also be caused by infection.
A Hodgkin lymphoma is marked by the presence of a type of cell called the Reed–Sternberg cell
The diagnosis of HL involves a multistage process. The removal and histopathological analysis of a lymph node or punch biopsy of another affected organ is the method of choice for diagnosis. Thus, pathological expert review is recommended. A fine needle biopsy alone is only sufficient if sufficient material for histopathological diagnosis can be obtained.
Other risk factors are genetic predisposition (high incidence among patient's relatives), immunodeficiency states, and environmental factors (high incidence in farmers, woodworkers, and meat processors).

Hodgkin lymphoma has an excellent overall prognosis with approximately an 80% cure rate.
The history of HL treatment represents a remarkable success story in which HL has turned from an incurable disease to a neoplasm with an excellent prognosis. First-line treatment with stage-adapted treatment consisting of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy results in cure rates of approximately 80%. Second-line treatment mostly consists of intensive salvage chemotherapy followed by high-dose chemotherapy (HDCT) and autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT).

Standard treatment in the United States (US) consists of ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine). In Germany, the BEACOPP regimen (bleomycin, etoposide, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, procarbazine, prednisone) is more popular. A third regimen that is used is Stanford V (doxorubicin, vinblastine, mechlorethamine, vincristine, bleomycin, etoposide, and prednisone).

By Blausen Medical Communications, Inc. - see ticket for details, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/....w/index.php?curid=27
By Cancer Research UK - Original email from CRUK, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/....w/index.php?curid=34
By Emmanuelm - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/....w/index.php?curid=10
By JHeuser - JHeuser, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/....w/index.php?curid=78

• Category

  Lymphoma - Hodgkin - Childhood