Prognostic value of event-free survival at 12 and 24 months and long-term mortality for non-Hodgkin follicular lymphoma patients: A study report from the Spanish Lymphoma Oncology Group

Abstract

Follicular lymphomas (FLs) are the second most common form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in Western Europe.1 The annual incidence of this disease has increased rapidly in the last decades from 2 to 3 cases per 100,000 in 1950 to 5.7 cases per 100,000 in 2009. The prevalence is approximately 40 per 100,000 per year.2 Patients usually have prolonged survival; medians can reach or exceed 10 years. The rates of response to different treatments are high, although responses are followed by sequent relapses with a shrinking time interval. Several lines of evidence suggest that the prognosis of patients with FL has improved since the introduction of rituximab. The median survival has increased up to 14 years, and progression-free survival has increased up to 5 years.3,4 These increases in patient survival have been observed since 2003 with the introduction of chemotherapy regimens combined with rituximab. The main goal of our study was to analyze the overall survival (OS) of patients with FL and compare it with the expected survival of the general population. Our purpose was to test the hypothesis of an eventual definitive cure for FL.