A collaborative study on children with mature B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in China

This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the CCCG-B-NHL 2010 protocol in children with mature B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (B-NHL) in China retrospectively. Eight tertiary referral centers for childhood cancer participated in this study. From April 2009 to March 2012, 104 patients below 18 years with newly diagnosed, untreated B-NHL or mature B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) were enrolled. Six patients refused further staging work-up and treatment due to the expense were excluded. Diagnostic slides were not centrally reviewed in this retrospective study. Twenty-three of 104 patients got rituximab therapy during the treatment. Of the 104 eligible patients (79 boys and 25 girls), the median age was 6.1 years (range 1.8-15.1 years). Two patients (1.9%) had stage I disease, 22 (21.2%) had stage II, 65 (62.5%) had stage III, 9 (8.6%) had stage IV, and 6 (5.8%) had B-ALL. At a median follow-up of 27.9 months (range 4.2-51.5 months), the 2-year probability of event-free survival (EFS) was (76.0 ± 4.3