The role of radiotherapy in primary central nervous system lymphoma / 中华放射肿瘤学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the role of radiotherapy in the treatment of primary central nervous system lymphoma. Methods Clinical data of 60 patients diagnosed with primary central nervous system lymphoma from September 2010 to December 2017 were retrospectively analyzed. Among them, 50 cases were diagnosed by histopathological examination after stereotactic biopsy or tumor resection and 10 patients were diagnosed by gadolinium enhanced magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI) . Fifty-two patients underwent chemotherapy, and 45 of them received methotrexate-based chemotherapy, 25 received rituximab-based regimen. Twenty-seven patients were given with planned whole brain radiotherapy, while 33 patients were not. Salvage radiotherapy was delivered in 9 patients after treatment failure. Results The median follow-up time was 28 months ( 5-70 months) . The median overall survival time and median progression-free survival time of the whole patients was 22 months ( 5-65 months) and 13 months ( 5-55 months) , respectively. The 4-year overall survival rate and progression-free survival rate were 61% and 33%, respectively. The 4-year overall survival rates between patients with and without planned whole brain radiotherapy were 68% and 54% ( P=0.083) . The 4-year progression-free survival rates between patients with and without planned whole brain radiotherapy were 47% and 20% ( P=0.014) , respectively. Patients with and without salvage whole brain radiotherapy had a 4-year overall survival of 49% and 68%, respectively ( P=0.398) . Among patients who received whole brain radiotherapy, patients with a lower dose of ≤36 Gy had a similar overall survival compared with those with a higher dose of>36 Gy ( 80% vs. 45%, P=0.136) . Conclusions Radiotherapy is part of the comprehensive treatment of primary central nervous system lymphoma. Planned radiotherapy may bring clinical benefits to patients during the comprehensive therapy. However, the irradiation dose to the whole brain should not be too high because of neurotoxicity.