Early stage nasal NK/T-cell lymphoma: clinical outcome, prognostic factors, and the effect of treatment modality

Purpose : To determine the clinical outcome, prognostic factors, and effect of adding combination chemotherapy to radiation therapy on disease control and survival in early stage nasal natural killer (NK)/T-cell lymphoma. Methods and Materials : A retrospective “intent to treat” analysis was carried out on 79 patients treated consecutively with curative intent between 1977 and June 2001. They all had early stage (Ann Arbor Stage I E: 63, II E:16) nasal NK/T-cell lymphoma. Sixty-one were planned for combined modality treatment (CMT); radiotherapy alone (RT) was intended for 18. Three to 6 cycles of anthracycline-containing regimens were aimed at for patients intended for CMT. Patients selected for RT were generally older or treated during the earlier part of the study period. Results : The overall complete response (CR) rate was 68.4% (54/79), of whom 44.4% (24/54) relapsed after 54.9 months median follow-up of the survivors. The 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) rates were 35.5% and 37.9%, respectively. On multivariate analysis, good performance status (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group [ECOG]