Incidence of Lymphoma Among Adult Patients in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia – A Single-center Study

BACKGROUND: Lymphoma is a cancer of the lymphatic system with two main types, namely Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and non-HL (NHL). Within these, there are many subtypes. Based on data from the National Cancer Institute, NHL accounts for 4.2% whereas HL accounts for 0.5% of all cancers in the United States. The treatment strategy depends on the type and the stage of the lymphoma. In this study, we are studying the incidence rate of lymphoma in a military-nononcology center for better understanding and recording of the condition. METHODS: We conducted an observational, analytical, retrospective study in a tertiary care hospital on 56 patients admitted to the hospital between January 2016 and the end of December 2021, with lymphadenopathy or body mass, who were diagnosed with lymphoma. The modality of diagnosis was tissue histopathology. All data including demographics, details of lymphoma lesions, and laboratory and histopathology results were obtained from health informatics or manual records. RESULTS: In this study, we found that 67.9% of the cases were male, with a significantly higher rate among Saudi patients in comparison to non-Saudi (94.6% and 5.3%, respectively). Among Saudi cases, we found that a significantly higher percentage of lymphoma cases were originally from the Eastern and the Southern provinces (47.1% and 35.8%, respectively), and 46.5% of them were living in Dammam at the time of diagnosis. The percentage of NHL was significantly higher than Hodgkin type (80.3% and 19.6%, respectively). The majority of the cases belonged to B-cell NHL (73.2%). Moreover, the incidence rate increased from 2016 to 2021 with an accumulative rate of 25.14 / 100,000 person-years. CONCLUSION: Our data indicate that the incidence rate of lymphoma increased in the last 5 years at a tertiary care center. We found evidence for associations between the original province and the rate of the lymphoma. Moreover, the rate of B-cell NHL was significantly higher with superior mortality rate in comparison to other types of lymphoma in our cohort, which supported previous studies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There was no increase in incidence of lymphoma in our study cohort of military personnel, and it matches the incidence data of other local studies. Further national studies and initiation of lymphoma registry may add a value for future researches.