Pathologic prognostic factors in diffuse aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Recent advances in understanding the immunophenotypic, molecular genetic, and cytogenetic heterogeneity of diffuse large-cell lymphomas (DLCL) have provided new insights into the diversity of these disorders. Clinical prognostic factors are useful for predicting outcome in DLCL, but are surrogates of the underlying biology. The role of pathologic prognostic factors as the biologic correlates of clinical behavior in DLCL should allow the development of new prognostic models that incorporate both clinical and pathological data, and lead to improved outcome for those patients not cured by modern-day treatment regimens.