[Frequency of malignant non-Hodgkin's lymphomas in biopsy material. A retrospective study]

The biopsy material of the Institute of Pathology of the Medical Academy of Erfurt, GDR, from January 1967 to February 1978 has been reinvestigated for malignant non-Hodgkin's lymphomas which were reclassified according to the Kiel classification (Gérard-Marchant et al. 1974). We observed 122 (72.6%) low grade malignant lymphomas and 46 (27.4%) high grade malignant lymphomas. 17 cases remained unclassifiable. The median age ranged between 47.6 years (lymphoblastic malignant lymphoma) and 65.8 years (centrocytic malignant lymphoma). The sex ratio shows a predominance of males for all types of low grade malignant lymphomas. Only the immunoblastic malignant lymphoma in the group of high grade malignant lymphomas has a predominance in females. The survival of patients with high grade malignant lymphomas shows a good correspondence to the data given in the literature, whereas patients suffering from low grade malignant lymphomas have a distinctly worse prognosis in our material in comparison to literature data.