Hodgkin's Marrow Involvement

Although bone marrow involvement is generally rare in Hodgkin’s lymphoma (4-14% of patients), the demonstration of involvement has prognostic and therapeutic implications. This clinical prediction rule identifies patients with low, standard, or high-risk for BM involvement. Physicians should make their own decision as to whether a bone marrow biopsy should be completed for each individual patient based on the referral pattern to their hospital and the treatment strategies applied. In the study reported below, one option suggested by the authors would be to avoid staging BM biopsies in patients in the “low-risk” group, offer a unilateral biopsy in standard-risk patients, and pursue bilateral biopsies in high-risk patients. However, this approach has not been prospectively validated.