Combination Chemotherapy With or Without Radiation Therapy in Treating Young Patients With Favorable-Risk Hodgkin Lymphoma

Patients receive doxorubicin hydrochloride intravenously (IV) and vinblastine IV on day 1 of weeks 1, 3, 5, and 7; mechlorethamine hydrochloride IV on day 1 of weeks 1 and 5; vincristine sulfate IV and bleomycin IV on day 1 of weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8; etoposide IV on day 1 of weeks 3 and 7; and prednisone orally (PO) three times daily every other day for 8 weeks. Two to 3 weeks after all chemotherapy is given, patients not achieving a complete response undergo radiation therapy to individual nodal sites (tailored fields).

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES:

1. To increase the complete response rate of favorable risk patients (excluding all patients with stage IA nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma) after 8 weeks Stanford V by at least 20% compared to favorable risk patients on HOD 99 after 8 weeks vincristine, doxorubicin hydrochloride, methotrexate and prednisone (VAMP).

SECONDARY OBJECTIVES:

To estimate the disease failure rate within the radiation fields.
To examine patterns of treatment failure for children treated with low dose tailored field radiation therapy.
To describe acute hematologic and infectious toxicities as they relate to transfusion requirements, growth factor support, episodes of febrile neutropenia, and hospitalizations, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) version 3.0.
To compare the survival distributions (event-free and overall) and cumulative incidence of local failure and toxicities of favorable risk patients treated with 8 weeks of Stanford V chemotherapy and low-dose tailored-field radiation to those on the favorable risk group of the HOD 99 study that received VAMP and low-dose involved-field radiation.
To compare the survival distributions between patients that will not be prescribed radiotherapy after 8 weeks Stanford V and those patients on HOD 99 that did not receive radiotherapy after VAMP.
To estimate the event-free survival distributions of favorable risk patients treated with Stanford V chemotherapy alone and patients treated with Stanford V chemotherapy plus low dose tailored field radiation.