Management of low-grade lymphomas in Hong Kong Chinese

During a 14-year period, 122 of 840 (14.5) Hong Kong patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphomas were diagnosed to have low-grade lymphomas according to the Working Formulation. Only 28 (23%) of them had stage I and II disease and local radiotherapy appeared to be curative in some of them. Although remissions were achieved with chemotherapy in a majority of the stage III and IV patients, a pattern of continuous relapses was noted in their disease-free survival curve. Multivariate analysis revealed that clinical stage and presence of B symptoms were significant independent prognostic factors.