Risk profile and outcome in Hodgkin's lymphoma: is obesity beneficial?

Abstract
Great advances have been made in oncology with regard to diagnostics, prognostics and therapeutics. However, dosing of chemotherapy in most cancers is still being based on the estimation of body surface area (BSA) [log (body surface in m2)=0.425 log (weight in kg) + 0.725 log (length in cm)+ 1.8564]. BSA fails, however, to standardize the marked inter-patient variation in pharmacokinetics for most cytotoxic drugs [1]. If not adjusted for, overweight and obese individuals receive higher relative (to tumor burden) doses of chemotherapy compared with normal or underweight individuals.