Purpose: We used alternative chemotherapy immediately followed in early-response patients by high-dose chemoradiotherapy and autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) to treat patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) who had failed to respond to first-line chemotherapy.
Patients and methods: Thirty-one patients with NHL of intermediate- or high-grade malignancy who had failed to respond to first-line cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (CHOP) chemotherapy were treated. Seventeen patients had primary refractory disease and 14 had relapsed from first complete response (CR). The treatment consisted of prednisone, methotrexate, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, etoposide, mechlorethamine, vincristine, and procarbazine (ProMACE-MOPP) salvage chemotherapy, followed, in case of responsive disease (at least partial response [PR]), by high-dose cyclophosphamide and total-body irradiation (TBI) with ABMT.
Results: Twenty-eight of 31 (90%) patients achieved PR (23 patients) or CR (five patients) with ProMACE-MOPP, and three failed to respond. Seventeen of 28 (61%) patients who responded underwent the ABMT procedure, which resulted in CR in 14 patients (82%); three failed to respond. Eleven responsive patients were not transplanted because of residual bone marrow infiltration (five patients), patient refusal (four patients), and ProMACE-MOPP-related mortality (two patients). To date, nine patients are alive and in CR, seven with a median follow-up of 41 months (range, 17 to 84 months). Referring to the original CHOP treatment, five of 17 (29%) patients with primary refractory disease remain free of disease at a median of 36 months after ABMT, and four of 14 (29%) patients in first relapse remain free of disease at a median of 33 months after ABMT. One patient died of AMBT-related toxicity.
Conclusion: ProMACE-MOPP salvage chemotherapy produces a high early-response rate in patients who fail to respond to first-line CHOP, and more than half of the responding patients can be scheduled to receive ABMT, resulting in disease-free survival (DFS) at 3 years in 50% of the transplanted patients and in 25% of the original number of patients intended to receive this treatment.