How similar are the Swedish trends versus other European countries?

FAQ published on November 19, 2014
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Magnus Björkholm, PhD, MD
Professor of Medicine
Head Unit of Internal Medicine
Karolinska University Hospital
Stockholm, Sweden
How similar are the Swedish trends versus other European countries?

With rather sophisticated statistical methods, we have also been trying to look into the future. So, if we look at the 20-year crude probability of death as a result of excess Hodgkin lymphoma that is in other courses, for example, for males in Sweden diagnosed at the age of 60 years, very high proportion died from Hodgkin lymphoma or its complications in 1973, but it has sort of drastically decreased, so patients diagnosed in 2003, they have a very low probability of excess deaths up to the year 2023. At the same time, death rates from other courses is of course increasing with time, and there will still be some excess Hodgkin lymphoma or Hodgkin lymphoma treatment related deaths even in coming decades. We have also looked at the observed and extrapolated excess death in cardiovascular disorders, and what we can see is that this type or course of death will decrease in patients diagnosed in the year 2000, much less in comparison to previous calendar periods. So, if we look upon the possibilities to improve our comfort for coming decades, there are a number of aspects, and some of them have already been started. So, continuous followup of the patients treatable, let’s say, old treatment, is very important, and there are national programs in Holland, Sweden, and many other countries for patients, given extended radiotherapy and also MOPP chemotherapy. And PET-CT is a very valuable tool for staging and restaging Hodgkin lymphoma, but we also need to better define the predictive role of interim PET-CT investigations. We can also explore the possibility to identify patients not responding, for instance, to ABVD chemotherapy, by biological studies like circulating biomarkers, gene expression profiling, tumor infiltrate, etc., and of course to identify the optimal use of brentuximab vedotin which has shown fantastic response rate in refractory Hodgkin lymphoma patients. Proton therapy is a new way to give radiation, which could really reduce the amount of radiation given to healthy tissue surrounding the tumor. Collaboration between study groups, we need more and more patients so that is another important issue, and of course to explore and develop new drugs, targeted therapy, and less toxic treatment.

Last modified: July 21, 2015
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