How to Treat Hodgkin's Disease

Hodgkin's disease is a malignant disease of the lymphatic system. The origin is uncertain but is associated with eosinophilic leukocytes and fibrosis. Hodgkin's disease is classified in four types: lymphocytic depletion, lymphocytic predominant, mixed cellularity and nodular sensing. Hodgkin's disease is highly treatable and was the first cancer to be cured with radiation. The following steps will show how to treat Hodgkin's disease.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Treat children with Hodgkin's disease in a pediatric oncology center. Hodgkin's disease can be cured with radiation, chemotherapy or both. Modern pediatric treatment usually focuses on minimizing the adverse effects of therapy while maintaining a high cure rate.
2. Place an intravenous catheter to administer medication, if needed. This decision is based on the treatment intensity, amount of supportive care expected, difficulty of inserting the catheter and the patient's preference.
3. Use radiation primarily as adjuvant therapy after chemotherapy. Radiation levels are usually limited low doses of extended field or involved field therapy.
4. Administer chemotherapy only in most pediatric cases of Hodgkin's disease. This is an effective therapy that avoids the complications of radiation therapy. Pediatric centers with well-developed radiation programs may combine radiation with chemotherapy to avoid the accumulated effects of high doses of alkylating agents such as anthracyclines and bleomycin required by the chemotherapy alone.
5. Determine a chemotherapy regimen. Chemotherapy options for Hodgkin's disease are varied and use multiple medications but can be grouped into regimens that include alkylating agents but not anthracyclines, those that use anthracyclines but not alkylating agents and those that use both types of agents.