[Histopathological study of 1096 cases of Hodgkin's disease. All China Hodgkin's Disease Investigation Group]

Abstract

Retrospective and histopathological study on 1096 cases of Hodgkin's disease (HD) showed that the incidence of HD in lymph node biopsy was 3.87%, the ratio between HD and NHL in 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were quite similar. Among 1083 cases of HD with sex record, 787 were male, and 296 were female. The ratio of male to female was 2.65:1, and the mean age was 31 years. According to Rye's classification, 274 were LP, 145 were NS, 511 were MC, 135 were LD and 19 were unclassified. The distribution of the four subtypes in this series showed that accounted LP for 25.3%, NS for 13.3%, MC for 47.1% and LD for 12.4%. There were three major differences: (1) NS was much less, (2) LD was higher, and (3) NS-G2 was much more, when compared to the figures of other representative studies in western countries. In regard to the pathological diagnosis, residue follicles could be obtained in 42.8% of the HD lesions, and therefore, the presence of residue follicles would not exclude the positive diagnosis of HD. Typical R-S cells could be found only in 39.2% of these cases. The recently reported "syncytial variant" change was not a special feature of NS in our study. Primary extranodal HD was extremely rare in this study, and the mortality of HD in China seemed much higher than that in the advanced countries.