ABSTRACT
Background: non Hodgkin Lymphoma is the most common hematologic malignancy and it is the 6th leading cause of cancer death. Relapses still occur in the majority of patients; overall, more than 30% of DLBCL will ultimately relapse
Aim of study: primary objective was to retrospectively correlate the occurrence of relapsed, refractory and in remission diffused large B cell lymphoma patients to both clinicpathological features of the disease and line of treatment received
Patients and Method: a total of 116 patients with aggressive high grade NHL patients [DLBCL] representing 86.6% of all patients presented to Clinical Oncology Department, Ain Shams University in the period between January 2009 and December 2015. Data were collected between January 2017 until Marsh 2017
Results: the mean age at diagnosis of the studied patients was 45 years. The incidence in male was higher than female [52.6% vs. 47.4%], the majority of the cases didn't have B symptoms [57.7%], high LDH level was measured among the cases [37%]and in only 36 patient's files,16.37% of the cases had positive HCV.The most common stage at diagnosis was stage IV [33.6%]followed by stage III [29.3%]. Based on response to the 1st line chemotherapy, DLBCL patients were further statistically analyzed into three categories:24 refractory patients [20.07%], 43 relapsed patients [37.1%] and 49 patients in remission [non relapsed] [42.2%]. Regarding 1st line treatment regimen by R-Chop, complete response rates were significantly higher in patients who received R-CHOP than in the group who received CHOP alone [57.1% vs 42.8%]. The median disease freesurvival in the relapsed groupwas 8 months. The median survival time for the DLBCL patients was 24 months. The survival rate after 1 year was 83.7%, while after 2 years it was 52.8% and after 3 years it was 21.3%
Conclusion: relapsed and refractory disease continues to represent the most significant challenge in treating NHL, the addition of rituximab to the CHOP regimen increased the CR rate and prolonged eventfree and overall survival