Abstract 2231
Background
Follicular lymphoma is the second most common tumor of lymphoid lineage. In Spain, between 3,000 and 5,000 new cases of follicular lymphoma are diagnosed each year. The cut-off age in the prognostic evaluation of patients is 60 years of age. A recently published study compared the clinicopathological characteristics of 155 patients diagnosed with follicular lymphoma before 40 years of age with older patients in a series of 1002 cases in 4 European centres over a 25-year period between 1985 and 2010.
Methods
The Spanish Lymphoma Oncology Group analyzed the survival and clinicopathological characteristics of patients registered in our national database of 1178 FL patients recruited between 1986 and 2012, and who were diagnosed prior to 40 years of age. A survival analysis was made using SPSS v19.
Results
The median age at diagnosis was 58 years, similar to the 56 years of age reported previously. The median survival in our series was 234 months, almost 20 years (95% CI 212-255), while the series reported in the recent article referred to was only 12.5 years. Similarly, we observed longer survival in those who were younger than 40 years at diagnosis, who have not yet reached the median survival, and a median of 16.3 years in patients older than 40 years, with these differences being statistically significant (P 7cm) at diagnosis were not statistically significant. Nevertheless we did find differences in performance status (PS) with a higher percentage of ECOG ≤ 1 in FL patients younger than 40 years of age (P = 0.000).
Conclusions
We believe that 40 should be the cut-off age in the prognostic evaluation of patients with follicular lymphoma rather than the classic 60 years of age.
Clinical trial identification
Legal entity responsible for the study
Spanish Lymphoma Oncology Group
Funding
Spanish Lymphoma Oncology Group
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.