Preliminary Results of Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation in the Management of Resistant Hodgkin’s Disease: Experience of the Bloomsbury Transplant Group at University College, London

Abstract

The preliminary results from our own (Goldstone et al. 1986; Gribben et al. 1987a;) and other centres (Appelbaum et al. 1985; Goldstone et al. 1987; Jagannath et al. 1987; Philip et al. 1986) prompted us to extend our ABMT trial in patients with Hodgkin’s disease. For the purposes of planning our own randomized studies we somewhat subjectively suggested that a reasonable starting point is a projected 5-year survival of less than 35%. Since the early morbidity and mortality of intensive therapy is high in this patient group, we further proposed that no patient should receive an ABMT if the projected survival is greater than 65% at 2 years. We have used the British National Lymphoma Investigation (BNLI) experience of over 600 patients with advanced HD treated by MOPP-type regimens as a data base for designing future studies (Gribben et al. 1987b).