Abstract
The purpose of the study was to assess the impact of number of salvage regimens needed to demonstrate chemotherapy sensitivity on relapse rates, survival, and toxicity following high-dose therapy and autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) in relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. We retrospectively reviewed 136 patients with intermediate-grade lymphoma who underwent ABMT. All patients were treated with salvage therapy to maximum tumor reduction. Three quarters (102/136) of the patients received one salvage regimen, while 31 (23%) patients received two or more regimens. When compared to patients requiring ≥ two regimens, patients requiring only one salvage regimen to demonstrate chemosensitivity were more likely to have a longer previous CR from initial therapy (CR ≥12 months in 47% vs 26%; P=0.04) and to have attained CR with salvage (54% vs 16%; P=0.001). Both median relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) have not yet been reached in patients receiving one salvage regimen (median follow-up 50.6 months). This is superior to the median RFS of 9.1 months (P=0.004) and OS of 11.1 months in patients requiring ≥two regimens to demonstrate chemosensitivity (P=0.002). Time to engraftment, toxic deaths and incidence of myelodysplasia were similar in the groups. The survival rate observed in patients requiring ≥two salvage regimens, although inferior to that of patients receiving a single salvage regimen, are still generally superior to results in the literature for patients treated with chemotherapy alone without ABMT. We conclude that high-dose therapy with ABMT is appropriate for lymphoma patients even when disease reduction requires repeated numbers of salvage regimens.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 885-891 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Bone Marrow Transplantation |
Volume | 30 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2002 |
Keywords
- Chemosensitivity
- Chemotherapy
- Lymphoma
- Salvage
- Transplant
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Hematology
- Transplantation