Laparoscopy and laparotomy in staging Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The use of laparotomy with splenectomy and multiple tissue biopsies has resulted in increasingly accurate staging of Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The data accumulated at the National Cancer Institute of Milan on 550 laparosplenectomies confirm this assumption (table 1). However, this surgical approach is accompanied by a mortality rate of 0.5%-2% according to various reports and by a rather significant morbidity. In addition, late infectious complications can occur, such as Varicella zoster. Finally, therapy cannot be started until 2-4 weeks after surgery. For these reasons, it is important to differentiate those patients for whom adequate information on staging may be obtained only by laparosplenectomy and those for whom laparoscopy may be sufficient.