Intensive cytoreductive therapy followed by autologous bone marrow transplantation for patients with hematologic malignancies or solid tumors.

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Fifty patients were studied. Twenty patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHL) of high-grade malignancy and 21 patients with acute leukemia (AL) were treated with high-dose cyclophosphamide and total body irradiation, and three patients with Hodgkin's disease (HD) and six patients with solid tumors were treated with high-dose cyclophosphamide and VP16-213. Those procedures were followed by autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT). All patients had received conventional chemo(radio)therapy before the ABMT procedure. Although remissions were obtained in patients with cytotoxic drug-resistant diseases (lymphomas and solid tumors), none has become a long-term survivor, as occurred also in patients with solid tumors in partial remission (PR). Two of five patients with NHL in PR at the time of ABMT have become long-term disease-free survivors (28+, 56+ months). Ten patients with NHL were treated in complete remission (CR) and seven are in unmaintained CR; four with long follow-up (14+ to 59+ months). All patients with AL were treated in CR; two patients received ABMT in second CR, and both relapsed. Ten of nineteen patients in first CR relapsed; eight are alive in CR, five with long follow-up. Four deaths were therapy-related, all were patients in poor clinical condition. Intensive cytoreductive therapy followed by ABMT can produce prolonged disease-free survival (and probably cure) in a fair number of patients with poor risk NHL in CR and PR and probably also in patients with acute myeloblastic leukemia in first CR. This procedure was not successful in achieving long-term disease-free survival in patients with refractory lymphomas or solid tumors.