Sequential polychemotherapy and large-field radiotherapy of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

The combination of polychemotherapy and large-field radiotherapy essentially promoted the improved total results achieved during the period of 1976 and 1982 in 272 patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHL) of low and high malignancy. In case of centroblastic-centrocytic (cb/cc) NHL of stages II A/III A, the recurrence-free survival after radiotherapy (n = 21) could be increased by the combined method (n = 25) from 17% to 60%, and the probability of seven-year survival could be improved from 70% to 90%. All of the ten initially irradiated patients in the stages I A/II A/III A of centrocytic (cc) NHL suffered from a recurrence, whereas the development seems to be more favorable in the five patients submitted to combined treatment who had only one recurrence. The recurrence-free seven-year survival of the highly malignant NHL in stage I A/II A increased from 40% after unique radiotherapy (n = 15) to 70% after combined therapy (n = 39), the survival probability increased from 55% to 75%. Despite the partly insufficient therapy results after unique radiotherapy and polychemotherapy, the combined method has largely contributed to achieve after eight years the total survival rates of 76% for cb/cc NHL (n = 123) and of 55% for the highly malignant immunoblastic NHL (n = 57), centroblastic NHL (n = 35) and NHL with uncertain classification, whereas the cc-NHL (n = 36) hitherto has a relatively unfavorable prognosis with only 29%.