Abstract
8572 Background: Rituximab has revolutionized the treatment of lymphomas and has been shown to improve clinical outcomes in patients with follicular lymphoma. Our study evaluated the progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with grades I and II follicular lymphoma when rituximab was used as initial therapy, as salvage or if no rituximab was used. Methods: Patients with grades I and II follicular lymphoma treated between June 1981 and January 2010 were included. Disease and treatment related variables were compared based on type of treatment (No rituximab-Group I, rituximab as salvage-Group II, Rituximab as initial treatment-Group III) using the Kruswal Wallis or chi-square tests. Univariate probabilities of PFS and OS were estimated using the Kaplan Meier method. Multivariate analyses were performed using Cox proportional hazards regression analysis to evaluate differences in risk of treatment failure and mortality in the three groups while adjusting for covariates. Results: There were 226 patients in group I, 84 in group II and 110 in group III. Significant differences were found in some of the disease and treatment related variables. Univariate analysis is shown in the Table. The relative risk of treatment failure for group II was 0.82 (p=0.26) and 2.63 (p=0.0001) respectively in the first 10 years and after 10 years while it was 0.52 (p=0.0003) and 3.97 (p=0.001) respectively for group III in the first 10 years and after 10 years. The relative risk of mortality in group II was 0.63 (p=0.008) and group III was 0.32 (p<0.0001). Conclusions: Overall survival for patients with low grade follicular lymphoma is significantly improved when rituximab is used as initial treatment or as salvage when compared with no rituximab. [Table: see text]
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