Pediatric hodgkin lymphoma

Abstract

Pediatric/young adult HL is one of the few childhood malignancies that shares aspects of its biology and natural history with an adult cancer. Historically, children were thought to have a worse prognosis than adults due to antiquated treatment approaches that were initially designed to mitigate toxicities in children. It is now clear that effective therapy provides similar or even superior outcomes in children/young adults. A comparison of the demographics of clinical presentations of pediatric/adolescent HL compared with adult HL is presented in Table 14.1. The first of the bimodal incidence peaks in Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) occurs in teenagers and young adults (15-25-year age group). HL represents less than 5 % of malignancies in children under the age of 15 years. In contrast, it represents 16-20 % of malignancies in adolescents making it the most common malignancy of this age group.