Improved survival in the treatment of advanced hodgkin's disease at a nonuniversity institution (1970–1979)
✍ Scribed by William R. Friedenberg; P. Dirks; E. Beltaos; J. J. Mazza; J. L. Hoehn; R. H. Greenlaw; H. H. Russ; L. L. Schloesser
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1986
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 469 KB
- Volume
- 57
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0008-543X
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
From 1970 through 1979, 89 patients with Hodgkin's disease were treated at the Marshfield Clinic/St. Joseph's Hospital. After the pathologic material was reviewed, the patients were analyzed to compare Group I (1970-1973) with Group I1 (1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979). Demographic characteristics in the two groups were similar. In the decade, 76% of patients achieved complete remission. In advanced-stage disease, 50% of patients achieved complete remission in Group I compared with 68% in Group 11. At 5 years, 50% of patients were alive without COPP (cyclophosphamide, vincristine, procarbazine, prednisone) chemotherapy; with this treatment, 75% of patients survived (P = 0.02). There was improved survival comparing Group I (56% at 5 years) with Group I1 (76% at 5 years) patients with advanced disease (P = 0.004). More aggressive cornhination chemotherapy (COPP) was related to the improvement in survival (P < 0.001).
The advances in treatment made hy cooperative groups and universities are being transferred to nonuniversity institutions, with appropriate improvement in survival of Hodgkin's disease.
Cancer 57:12-17, 1986.
N THE LAST 20 years there has been a dramatic improve-I ment in survival for advanced Hodgkin's disease, primarily because of the development of more effective therapy.' During the same period, cooperative groups, which originally consisted of university-affiliated hospitals or major cancer treatment centers, were formed to carry out clinical trials to improve the survival of patients with many types of cancer. Some member institutions encouraged community hospitals to become involved, and by the late I970s, involvement of community hospitals in therapeutic research was common.2 Early in the 1970s some investigators believed that unless Hodgkin's disease centers were designated and patients referred to them by physicians in community hospitals, there would be no improvement in survival of these patient^.^ Analysis by investigators of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG)' and the Northern California Oncology Group (NCOG)4 has shown that the quality of data collected by the community institutions was equal to or surpassed that of the university members in most measures. Although only 16% of pa-