Prognosis of high dose chemotherapy/autologous bone marrow transplantation candidates not receiving this treatment after failure of primary therapy of XXXX .

@entity1 @entity1726 @entity978 @entity5
In a multicenter study on the therapy of @entity978 , in 88 out of 297 @entity1 with primary advanced stages IIIB/IV, a failure to the treatment with the alternating chemotherapy COPP/ABVD +/- radiation was recorded. The cause of failure was as follows: @entity5 progression under current therapy ( @entity1726 ) 23/88, partial response at the end of therapy (PR) 28/88, early nodal relapses 13/88, late nodal relapses 16/88, extranodal relapses 7/88, undetermined localization 1/88.36 months after manifestation of the failure to treatment, 45% of all @entity1 were still alive. In cases of primary @entity1726 the prognosis was the worst of all. Only 1/23 of these @entity1 received a long-term continuous complete remission (cCR) with the salvage therapy. 11 @entity1 with only a nodal relapse received a cCR with irradiation alone. These cases could be regarded as low risk relapses. For the high risk relapse group (n = 57) an indication for high dose chemotherapy with subsequent autologous bone marrow transplantation (HDC/ABMT) would have been imperative, following the present-day definition. The probability of survival of these @entity1 who, however, only received a conventional salvage therapy was up to 38% (95% confidence interval 22-54%). Comparing these data with the literature our results seem not to be substantially worse than those for @entity1 who underwent HDC/ABMT. Only in a randomized comparison can the decision be made on whether HDC/ABMT would be superior to high dose conventional chemotherapy supported by hematopoietic growth factors. It is suggested that such a therapy study be performed as soon as possible.
