Clinical prognostic factors in non-Hodgkin's lymphomas

Hospital records of 201 consecutive and histologically diagnosed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients were retrospectively analysed in an effort to determine the clinical prognostic factors affecting survival. The uncorrected five-year survival was 45%, and when corrected for other causes of death than lymphoma 48%. Response to the primary treatment (p less than 0.001), stage of the disease at diagnosis (p less than 0.001), occurrence of B-symptoms (p less than 0.01) and age (p less than 0.01) were strongly correlated to the final outcome. B-symptoms had negative effect on survival during the first year after the diagnosis, but not afterwards. Survival decreased with advancing age except in children, who had as poor survival as patients over 60 years of age. The primary site, sex or occurrence of extranodal lymphoma (43%) did not have influence on survival. Patients with a positive bone marrow aspiration biopsy did not have less favourable survival than other patients with stage IV lymphoma. Patients with a positive bipedal lymphangiogram had similar prognosis as those with a negative one. It is concluded that the most important prognostic factors other than histology in non-Hodgkin's lymphomas are response to the primary treatment, stage, age and occurrence of B-symptoms.