Stage I non-Hodgkin lymphoma: no plateau in disease-specific survival ?

Stage I non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is rare; prognostic impact of different histologic subtypes and treatment modality is still unclear. We used the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database to evaluate survival outcomes among adult patients (age ≥ 18 years, N = 58,230) diagnosed with stage I NHL of various histologic subtypes between 1998 and 2014. Five-year disease-specific survival of patients with stage I diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), follicular lymphoma (FL), marginal zone lymphoma (MZL), small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), Burkitt lymphoma (BL), mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), and peripheral T cell lymphoma (PTCL) was 82%, 92%, 95%, 89%, 78%, 77%, and 77%, respectively. The median disease-specific survival was not reached in all histologic subtypes analyzed; however, there does not appear to be a plateau in disease-specific survival of patients with stage I NHL irrespective of subtypes. Although lymphoma was the most common cause of death (40.7%), death from other cancer (17.4%) and cardiovascular disease (13.6%) were also frequent. Chemotherapy appeared favorably associated with OS in patients with DLBCL, BL, and MCL while patients with FL, MZL, SLL, and PTCL who require chemotherapy for initial treatment showed shorter OS. Patients with stage I NHL have favorable disease-specific survival; however, no plateau was seen regardless of histologic subtypes thus suggesting that patients may need attention and follow-up even in aggressive lymphomas after 5 years of remission.