Treatment of relapses in aggressive non Hodgkin's lymphoma.

In spite of considerable progress in the initial treatment of aggressive non Hodgkin's lymphoma, patients in relapse have poor prognosis. Patients with refractory disease have an even worse outcome. Current strategies and published reports of relapsing patients are presented. Intensification of chemosensitive relapse has yielded a number of continuous second remissions. However considerable efforts are required to define when transplantation should be performed, which type of graft should be used, and what type of post-intensification therapy can be proposed to improve the remission rate and duration.