Long-term follow-up of patients receiving salvage chemotherapy for intermediate and high grade non-Hodgkin's lymphomas.

This is an analysis of the long-term follow-up data of 99 patients receiving HOAP-Bleo, IMVP-16 and PAC as salvage chemotherapy for refractory or relapsed intermediate or high grade non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. Most of the patients received HOAP-Bleo or PAC following failure of initial chemotherapy and IMVP-16 was used mainly for HOAP-Bleo failures. The longest follow-up time of the surviving patients was 108 months. Twenty-two and 29 per cent of the patients survived beyond 2 years following HOAP-Bleo and PAC respectively. The treatment outcome following IMVP-16 was worst with a 2-year survival of only 5 per cent, as it was used mainly following HOAP-Bleo failures. Although the prognosis of these refractory or relapsed cases are poor, salvage treatment is still worthwhile as a small proportion of these patients may have long-lasting remissions and occasional patients may be cured. Newer approaches such as autologous bone marrow transplantation should be compared with current salvage chemotherapy regimens.