Comparison of a Standard Regimen (CHOP) with Three Intensive Chemotherapy Regimens for Advanced Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma

The development of curative combination chemotherapy for patients with advanced stages of aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has been one of the major successes of cancer therapy during the past two decades. First-generation regimens, which generally included four chemotherapeutic agents, produced complete remission in 45 to 55 percent of patients and cure in approximately 30 to 35 percent 1 – 5 . Among these first-generation regimens, CHOP (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) was studied extensively in national cooperative-group trials and has been considered standard therapy. In the 1980s, several large lymphoma-referral centers conducted pilot trials of second-generation and third-generation treatment programs that used six . . .