Primary bone lymphoma (PBL) real world experience of a single cancer hospital. results, prognostic factors, treatment and long term follow up of 12 patients

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Background: PBL is a very rare condition which constitutes less than 1% of all lymphomas. Due to the uncommon entity of this disease there is a lack of concordance in the characteristics, optimal management, treatment strategies and the associated outcome. Methods: Herein, we retrospectively review 12 consecutive patients initially diagnosed with PBL and also treated at our institution from 2001 to present. Results: The median age of the patients was 49 years old. Eight patients were female and 4 male. The histological type of all 12 patients presented was DLBCL. Ten patients (83%) were presented with Ann Arbor Stage I or II disease. While 2 patients (17%) had stage IV disease, none of them showed bone marrow involvement at their initial diagnosis. The median follow-up after achieving CR was 80 months. Our analysis demonstrated that age less than 47 years, lack of B symptoms, normal LDH level, Stage I or II and female gender were found to be favorable prognostic factors for achieving CR and OS. All 12 patients underwent chemotherapy with most of them (10; 83%) receiving 6 to 8 cycles of the RCHOP regimen. The majority (11; 92%) of them received chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy. After front line chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy most patients (9; 75%) achieved CR. Among the remaining three patients, the one patient died before completing first line chemotherapy due to an infection during chemotherapy-induced neutropenia, the other patient is undergoing autologous stem-cell transplantation due to refractory PBL and the third one achieved CR after he underwent high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem-cell transplantation due to refractory PBL. Both patients that had refractory disease were male and initially diagnosed with stage IV PBL. The median OS was 100 months. Conclusions: The data from our study supports that most PBL patients have had early stage disease (IE-IIE) on diagnosis which also was the most important favorable prognostic factor. Overall, patients with primary lymphoma involving the bone with DLBCL have an excellent prognosis and only a limited number of patients underwent autologous stem-cell transplantation in order to achieve CR.

Candidemia in patients with acute leukemia

PURPOSE

To present the clinical course and laboratory results of leukemic patients with candidemia and to comment on the incidence and clinical findings of mycoses in this particular patient population.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

From 2002 to 2005 in the Department of Hematology of our institution 53 leukemic patients with clinical signs of infection and severe neutropenia after intensive chemotherapy presented 127 febrile episodes during which blood cultures were taken, both from central venous catheters and from peripheral veins with a sterile method as described elsewhere.

RESULTS

4/53 (7.5%) of neutropenic patients presented disseminated candidiasis with positive blood cultures with different species of Candida (C) according to the EORTC criteria. Two patients had strains susceptible to all or most antifungal agents, 1 had dose-dependent sensitivity and 1 had C. krusei resistant to all agents. Two patients died probably because of disseminated candidiasis, 1 survived and 1 died of unrelated cause.

CONCLUSION

Fungal infections are not uncommon in patients with hematological malignancies, but they are rarely microbiologically documented. A fast and reliable means of diagnosis of invasive fungal infections is urgently needed.