Whole abdominal irradiation in non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. II. Therapeutic criteria.
Three hundred ninety-one patients treated for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from 1966 until 1983 were reviewed to discover a subset of 29 patients for whom whole abdominal radiation was the common modality of treatment. Seventeen patients were studied with staging laparotomy. the remainder by biopsy. Histologic characteristics revealed a diffuse-type pathology in 15 patients and a nodular-type in 14. Patients were further subselected into "favorable" (DWDLL, NPDLL, NML) and "unfavorable" (DULL, DML, DHL, DPDLL) histologies. Radical treatment for this series included 19 patients given a combined radio-chemotherapy program and 10 patients more conservatively treated with radiation alone. Follow-up for 16 living patients ranges from 2 to 16 years. Three patients developed secondary solid tumors and four patients died of intercurrent disease free from lymphoma. The possible role of whole abdominal radiation as definitive or adjunctive therapy is discussed.
D000005:Abdomen; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D006801:Humans; D008228:Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000473:pathology / Q000532:radiotherapy*; D009364:Neoplasm Recurrence, Local; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000150:complications; D011379:Prognosis