TREATMENT OF RELAPSE AND REFRACTORY HODGKIN LYMPHOMA

Abstract

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) represents one of the great success stories in hematology going from a uniformly fatal disease; to one that is curable in the vast majority of cases. Despite this success; approximately 5–10 % HL patients are refractory to initial treatment and 10–30 % of patients will relapse after achieving an initial complete remission. The standard treatment is second-line therapy followed by autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (autoHSCT); which cures an additional 50 % of patients. Brentuximab Vedotin; “antibody-drug conjugate”; dramatically changed the possibilities of therapy for relapses/refractory HL. The article presents a review of the literature on the treatment of relapses/refractory HL.

Keywords

• hodgkin lymphoma
• relapse
• refractory disease
• cd30
• autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation
• brentuximab vedotin