Long-term complications after staging laparotomy for Hodgkin lymphoma.

Abstract

e20007 Background: There are over 164,000 long-term survivors of Hodgkin lymphoma in the US. Awareness of the potential for preventable high risk late complications is critical for avoiding early mortality and insuring quality of life. We sought to identify key late complications in patients who had undergone staging laparotomy Methods: Retrospective review of hospital records and database of cancer survivors at our institution. Results: 95 patients with HL were identified; of these 24 patients with HL underwent staging laparotomy from 1971-1994. 18 patients had complete data available with median age at diagnosis of 13.7 years and median follow-up of 27.9 years. 16 patients underwent splenectomy, 12 patients received chemotherapy and 17 received XRT. Six patients (33%) had findings of intra-abdominal disease on laparotomy. Three patients (17%) required four repeat laparotomies for bowel obstruction more than 10 years after staging laparotomy. Of the 3 patients requiring repeat laparotomy for bowel obstruction, one had radiation to the inguinal region, one had mantle radiation (patient with 2 bowel obstructions requiring laparotomy and lysis of adhesions), and one had unknown radiation therapy history. In contrast, there were no cases of bowel obstruction in the other 71 patients who did not receive initial staging laparotomy. There were no documented cases of post-splenectomy sepsis and all post splenectomy patients received some prophylactic antibiotics. Conclusions: This is the first study to examine long term complications after staging laparotomy in a longitudinal cohort of survivors of HL. In long term follow-up, patients who underwent staging laparotomy for HL appear to have an increased incidence of repeat laparotomy, 3-4 fold higher than the expected rate of post laparotomy bowel obstruction incidence in the literature. Otherwise, the long term outcome of splenectomy in these patients appears to be very good with no episodes of post splenectomy sepsis, These findings underscore the importance of a high index of suspicion for bowel obstruction and related complications in HL survivors who had previous abdominal operative procedures. This work also underscores the importance of long term follow-up and screening in this population.