Hope for Hodgkin's

Too many people think of Hodgkin's disease as "a progressive condition leading inevitably to death," Stanford University's Dr. Henry S. Kaplan told the American Cancer Society. Worse yet, many doctors make what Dr. Kaplan considers a fundamental mistake: they give too small doses of radiation to patients in the early stages of the disease, thus giving it more chance to progress. Of all U.S. Hodgkin's patients, only about one-third live five years after the disease is diagnosed, largely because they get too little treatment.

Among patients treated at some ma jor medical centers with massive doses of radiation, the "fiveyear cure rate" is much higher. At Palo Alto, Radiologist Kaplan's team gives huge doses of radiation from a linear accelerator. Two out of three of their patients live five years or longer, and they are "dying at the same rate as the general population," said Dr. Kaplan.

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