Thirty-eight patients with refractory or relapsed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (19 patients) or Hodgkin's disease (19 patients) were treated with salvage therapy. The peripheral stem cell collection was performed during hematologic recovery after myeloablative chemotherapy. In eight patients with Hodgkin's disease the number of CFU-GM collected was less than 0.5 x 10(4)/kg and these patients were excluded for stem cell transplantation. In the remaining 30 patients, a median of 4 x 10(4) CFU-GM/kg was collected (range 0.8-100 x 10(4)/kg) by three leukaphereses in 25 patients and six to 11 leukaphereses in five patients. Conditioning regimens were CBV (eight), BEAM (six), BEAC (10) and cyclophosphamide + total body irradiation (TBI) (six). Without TBI, the mean time for reaching a granulocyte count greater than 0.5 x 10(9)/l was 18 days and for a platelet count greater than 50 x 10(9)/l was 19 days in 23 out of 24 patients. With TBI, in five patients the mean time for reaching a granulocyte count greater tahn 0.5 x 10(9)/l was 37 days and for a platelet count greater than 50 x 10(9)/l was greater than 100 days. Complications were minor. There was only one toxic death. The outcome in these patients was similar to that observed in patients who received autologous bone marrow transplantation for advanced lymphomas. In conclusion, we observed good hematologic recovery except when TBI was used in the conditioning regimen.