Peritoneoscopy in the staging of Hodgkin's disease.

an alternative to examination of the liver at laparotomy. The results indicate that the yield of positive biopsies is similar to the series reported from Stanford, and in both studies the patients at risk of having liver involvement are those with preoperative evidence of disease below the diaphragm. If careful study of the data evolving from staging laparotomies shows that the major therapeutic benefit of the procedure is the identification and exclusion from radiotherapeutic programs of those patients with evidence of liver involvement, then peritoneoscopy may be an alternative to laparotomy.