PROGNOSTIC VALUE OF CYTOGENETIC ABNORMALITIES IN PREVIOUSLY UNTREATEDPATIENTS WITH NON-HODGKINS-LYMPHOMA

In this study cytogenetic findings have been correlated with prognosis in 78 previously untreated patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) presenting between 1983 and 1988. The median follow-up was 7 years (r ange 2-9 years). There was no significant difference in the duration o f survival of 33 patients with only abnormal karyotypes, 35 patients w ith a mixture of normal and abnormal karyotypes (AN) and 10 patients w ith only normal karyotypes (NN). This was true for the entire group (p = 0.6) as well as for the subsets of diffuse lymphomas (DL) and folli cular lymphomas (FL) (p = 0.6 and 0.4, respectively). Monosomy 14 was the only abnormality in the entire group of patients to be associated with a statistically significant difference in survival duration (p = 0.046), Among the FL patients, trisomy 7 (p = 0.046) and trisomy 12 (p = 0.010) were associated with shorter survival. Presence of t(14;18) did not influence survival in the entire group (p = 0.16), nor in any of the histological subgroups. Among the FL patients with t(14;18), pr esence of additional cytogenetic abnormalities was not associated with a worse outcome. The lack of consistency of results between various s tudies is likely to be due to several factors and the prognostic signi ficance of karyotypic abnormalities can only be clarified by large pro spective studies employing uniform treatment policies.