Brazilian Prospective Hodgkin Lymphoma Registry

Hodgkin Lymphoma is considered one of the malignancies with highest cure rates. Its prognosis improved substantially along the last three decades, as a result of relevant cooperative studies carried out in American and European institutions. Around 70-80% of the patients are cured with the available chemotherapy regimens.

However, data about HL in developing countries are scarce. It is well established that patients in underprivileged societies present with malignancies in more advanced stages. In studies of HL patients treated in Brazil during the 80's, most patients presented with advanced disease.

The creation of registry of patients with HL will provide a more reliable picture of the disease in the country, its prevalence in different areas and socioeconomic groups, and treatment outcomes. It will also foster the establishment of a network among hospitals in all regions of the country, which may serve as a platform for further development of cooperative studies engaging the main Brazilian Institutions.

The data collection allows comparison of data entered into the registry against predefined rules for range or consistency with other data fields in the registry. Also, quality assurance addresses data validation and data analysis. Standard descriptive analyses will be carried out. For a crude association analysis, categorical data will be analysed using the chi-square or Fisher's exact test (two-sided). Survival curves will be estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and compare using the log-rank test. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses will be conducted to verify the prognostic factors regarding Progression free survival and Overall survival, adjusted for relevant prognostic clinical variables and treatment.