Lemieux’s Prognosis Is Good : Cancer: Much progress has been made in the treatment of Hodgkin’s disease.

Mario Lemieux, whose condition was diagnosed as Hodgkin’s disease Tuesday, fits the classic profile of a victim of the rare cancer but also stands an excellent chance of full recovery, according to medical experts.

Hodgkin’s disease is a type of lymphoma--a cancer of the network of glands and vessels that make up the lymphatic system--and accounts for about 1% of cancer in the United States. Between 7,000 and 8,000 new cases of Hodgkin’s disease are diagnosed in this country each year; last year, 7,400 new cases were recorded.

The disease generally strikes people who are in their 20s and 30s--Lemieux is 27--and affects men more often than women. For reasons doctors cannot explain, Hodgkin’s most often first appears with a tumor causing a lump in the neck--as was the case with the Pittsburgh Penguins’ star. More often than not, the lump is on the left side.

If the cancer is detected early enough, as doctors have said Lemieux’s was, Hodgkin’s patients stand an 80% to 90% chance of full recovery after radiation therapy, according to Dr. Wyndham Wilson, a specialist in lymphoma therapy at the National Cancer Institute.

“He’s male, he’s within the right age group, the tumor has a very good prognosis and the therapy, for a cancer therapy, is about as gentle as they come,” Wilson said. “I would say that, overall, this guy has got a very good chance of being cured with minimal problems.”

Said Dr. Jerome Ritz of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston: “Hodgkin’s is one of the most treatable types of cancers. Even in the most extensive stages, there are a lot of patients who do very well.”

Last year 1,500 Americans--900 men and 600 women--died of Hodgkin’s disease, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society. That is a significant decline from three decades ago, when Hodgkin’s disease was considered incurable and took the lives of an estimated 3,000 annually.

Much of the decline has been because of dramatic improvements in treatment during the 1970s and ‘80s, when doctors determined that radiation therapy could effectively cure the disease in its early stages, and that radiation combined with chemotherapy worked well for Hodgkin’s patients with advanced cases.

No one knows what causes Hodgkin’s disease, although Wilson, of the National Cancer Institute, said some studies have shown a relationship between Hodgkin’s and the virus that causes mononucleosis. The disease is usually not hereditary, he said.

In cases such as Lemieux’s, the general course of treatment for Hodgkin’s is radiation therapy--in which the tumor is bombarded with rays at doses that kill the cancerous cells but produce only minimal damage to surrounding tissues--five days a week over a four- to six-week period. Lemieux is expected to undergo radiation treatment for the next month.

According to Wilson, there is nothing to prevent a patient from working during the treatment. But because radiation causes patients to feel tired, he said, it is unlikely that an athlete would continue to play a sport such as ice hockey during treatment.