The pathology and nomenclature of Hodgkin's disease.

into the following 6 groups: (a) lymphocytic and/or histiocytic (L & H),1 nodular; (b) lymphocytic and/or histiocytic (L & H), diffuse; (c) nodular sclerosis; (d) mixed; (e) diffuse fibrosis; and (/) reticular. The L & H types represent essentially a pre dominant lymphocytic proliferation with histiocytes, while diffuse fibrosis and reticular are associated with lymphocytic depletion. Nodular sclerosis has a remarkably high incidence of mediastinal involvement when initially observed, exceeding all other types combined, and appears to represent a regional expression of Hodgkin's disease in the mediastinum. The mixed type appears to reflect a changing disease state. These histologie types, with the exception of nodular sclerosis, represent differ ences in the frequency of lymphocytes and Reed-Sternberg cells and serve to emphasize their inverse relationship. The histologie findings are regarded as reflections of differences in the state of the host responsiveness and are believed to be related to the recently described immunologie defect. The demonstrated relationship between these histologie types, and the clinical stages and survival, provides further support for the importance of host factors and also presents an effective basis for prog nostication. In addition a new histologie type, nodular sclerosis, has emerged as the most important prognostic type when observed in clinical Stage I. The majority of the terms proposed in the literature for the histologie types of Hodgkin's disease represent designations for