RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) comprises about 25% of all malignant nodal lymphomas worldwide. Incidence of HL has been increasing in many countries around the world, in the western countries in particular. Cancer incidence variations in different ethnic groups in the same country can lead to some important information about the search of etiological factors. Some researchers found an association between ethnicity and increased risk of HL. In this study, we evaluated the epidemiologic and clinical characteristics of patients with HL and the HL subtypes in Kuwait who were diagnosed between 1998 and 2006 and we analyzed the changes in the incidence of HL over time based on age, sex, and ethnicity. MATERIAL AND METHOD: The Kuwait Cancer Control Center is a tertiary referral hospital and the only cancer hospital in the entire state of Kuwait. We identified 293 patients who were newly diagnosed with HL by histopathology between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2006, at the Kuwait Cancer Control Center. Incidence data were crossvalidated with the population-based Cancer Registry of Kuwait. Clinical data were obtained by reviewing the patients' medical records. RESULTS: The median age at diagnosis was 39 years (range, 10-85 years) for patients with cHL and 36 years (range, 14-51 years) for patients with NLPHL. The age-adjusted incidence rate was 2.1 cases (range, 1.2-2.9) per 100,000 people per year in the period between 1998 and 2006. NLPHL and cHL were predominant in men with a male to female ratio of 2:1. However, the mean annual percentage change in HL incidence among Kuwaiti patients and non-Kuwaiti patients per year showed unexplained higher percentage in females both Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti. cHL comprised 92.5% of all HL cases and NLPHL comprised 7.5%. Nodular sclerosis was the predominant histologic subtype of cHL (58.9%), whereas mixed cellularity was the second most frequent histologic subtype of cHL, (25.9%). CONCLUSION: Although the incidence of HL was slightly lower in Kuwait than the worldwide incidence; it was similar to Asian descent population. Incidence of HL varied in the same country among different ethnic subgroups. The mean annual percentage change increased in Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti females.