Major Prognostic Factors in Patients with T- and B-Cell Lymphomas

Abstract

Major prognostic factors were analyzed by Cox proportional hazard model in 311 patients with B-lymphoma and 141 with T-lymphoma, who were treated with combination chemotherapy as the initial therapy during 1975 to 1987. Poor prognosis was associated with high grade pathology, increaing number of extranodal lesions, advanced stage, initial combination chemotherapy without doxorubicin, low total protein and intestinal lesion in B-lymphoma, but with increasing number of involved lesions, high LDH, low total protein, anemia, skin lesion and patients treated before 1982 in T-lymphoma. First three factors of each disease were the most important with risk ratio more than 2.5. New risk group was made from combination of the factors, which was ordered from low to high hazard rate. The new risk groups for T- and B-lymphoma are usefull for estimation of prognosis and determination of adequate chemotherapy of the patients. The prognostic factors of T-lymphoma were completely different from those of B-lymphoma, suggesting that T- and B-lymphoma are different disease and should be analyzed separately.