ARTICLE...

Cardiovascular disease is the most important cause of excess mor-tality, after second malignancy, in long-term survivors of Hodgkin disease ( 1 – 3). Myocardial infarction is the single most common cause of these cardiovascular disease deaths. Several cohort studies in North America and Europe have shown that patients who received mediastinal irradiation for Hodgkin disease had an increased risk of myocardial infarction mortality compared with the respective general populations, although the magnitude of this risk varied considerably ( 4). The relative risks of myocardial infarction mortality have generally been greater in men than in women and in patients treated when young than in patients treated at older ages. Although some studies ( 5 – 7) have analyzed risks of myocardial infarction mortality among Hodgkin disease patients in relation to chemotherapy overall, no study, to our knowledge, has examined these risks in association with specific regimens o