Primary testicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma: a single institution experience from India

Primary testicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is an uncommon extra nodal presentation, constituting 1% of all NHL. Median age at time of presentation is 60 years. Anthracycline based chemotherapies are most frequently used. There is not enough data on use of monoclonal antibody (Rituximab) in testicular NHL.

We screened approximately eight hundred and fifty NHL cases registered from January 2002 to May 2008 and found six primary testicular NHL patients. These six cases were analyzed for baseline clinical features, investigations, staging, treatment and outcome variables.

Median age was 55 years (range 7-72 years) and median duration of symptoms was 3.5 months (range 1-8 months). All patients had testicular swelling and abdominal lymphadenopathy. Five patients (83%) had stage IV and one had stage IE disease. Majority had diffuse large B-cell histology (83%). All patients were treated with anthracycline based combination chemotherapy and CNS prophylaxis after local therapy except one pediatric patient who did not receive any local therapy. Four patients completed therapy and are on follow up while two patients having extensive disease with poor performance status died of neutropenic sepsis after 1-2 cycles of chemotherapy. The surviving four patients achieved complete remission and are without any recurrence with a median follow up of 26 months (1-78 months).

Primary testicular NHL is an uncommon entity and with current combined modality treatment and CNS prophylaxis, the outcome may be as good as nodal NHL.