Primary intestinal non-Hodgkin's lymphoma:A clinicopathologic analysis of 81 patients

AIM:To analyze the clinicopathologic features and the prognosis of primary intestinal lymphoma.METHODS:Patients were included in the study based on standard diagnostic criteria for primary gastrointesti-nal lymphoma,and were treated at Sun Yat-sen Univer-sity Cancer Centre between 1993 and 2008.RESULTS:The study comprised 81 adults.The most common site was the ileocaecal region.Twenty-two point two percent patients had low-grade B-cell lym-phoma.Fifty-one point nine percent patients had high-grade B-cell lymphoma and 25.9% patients had T-cell lymphoma.Most patients had localized disease.There were more patients and more early stage diseases in the latter period,and the origin sites changed.The ma-jority of patients received the combined treatment,andabout 20% patients only received nonsurgical therapy.The wverall survival and event-free survival rates after 5 years were 71.6% and 60.9% respectively.The mul-tivariate analysis revealed that small intestine and ileo-caecal region localization,B-cell phenotype,and normal lactate dehydrogenase were independent prognostic factors for better patient survival.Surgery based treat-ment did not improve the survival rate.CONCLUSION:Refined stratification of the patients according to the prognostic variables may allow indi-vidualized treatment.Conservative treatment may be an optimal therapeutic modality for selected patients.