Fludarabine phosphate as an active and well tolerated salvage therapy in an elderly heavily pretreated Hodgkin's disease patient: a case report.

Up to two thirds of all patients affected by advanced Hodgkin's disease will be cured by chemotherapy alone or by combined chemoradiation modalities. High-dose chemotherapy with autologous stem cell rescue may be potentially curative for patients progressing under frontline chemotherapy or developing early relapse of disease. In spite of this, an unacceptably high percentage of these high-risk patients will relapse after salvage treatments and die of their disease. Fludarabine phosphate is an adenosine nucleoside analog highly active in chronic lymphocytic leukemia and low-grade non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. There are only few data in the literature concerning its use in the management of Hodgkin's disease. We report the case of an elderly, heavily pretreated Hodgkin's disease patient in progression under third-line chemotherapy who experienced good palliation of her B symptoms and a major clinical response of her refractory bone lesions with the administration of fludarabine as monotherapy. The treatment was well tolerated, without grade 4 hematological toxicity or opportunistic infections. The duration of clinical remission and systemic symptom palliation was 9 and 11 months, respectively. Further evaluation of fludarabine phosphate as salvage therapy in relapsed/refractory elderly Hodgkin's disease patients is needed.