PROGNOSTIC-SIGNIFICANCE OF CLINICAL AND PATHOLOGICAL FEATURES IN DIFFUSE LARGE B-CELL LYMPHOMA

Background and Methods. The diffuse large cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas a re a heterogeneous group of neoplasms that are potentially curable. To identify important predictors of clinical outcome, the authors evalua ted the clinical and pathologic features of 114 patients with newly di agnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma who were uniformly staged and tr eated with curative intent. The authors were particularly interested i n determining whether any pathologic features added to the ability of the clinical features to predict patient survival. Results. Several cl inical and pathologic features were found to be associated with surviv al by univariate analysis. However, multivariate analysis disclosed th at only the stage of disease and the symptom status were significantly associated with survival. Low stage and lack of B symptoms were favor able indicators of overall survival and failure-free survival. Conclus ions. The authors suggest that the evaluation of pathologic features i n diffuse large B-cell lymphoma has little prognostic utility and reco mmend that the pathology evaluation be limited to features that are us eful for diagnostic purposes.