Failure of the International Prognostic Index to prognosticate

outcome in primary gastric DLBC lymphoma We read with interest the original article published in the Annals of Oncology by Binn et al. [1], addressing the role of surgery plus chemotherapy in the management of diffuse large B-cell gastric lymphoma. We would like to make a correction in this regard. The authors stated that their results support the prognostic value of the International Prognostic Index (IPI) in predicting survival out-come in localized gastric lymphoma, and in the next sentence they indicate that these results are in agreement with ours, published in 1999, in one of the largest published series about this disease [2]. In fact, according to our paper, the IPI failed to classify patients into prognostically meaningful risk strata. A modified prognostic index was developed and proved to be of more prognostic signifi-cance. However, we recommended that prospective validation of the proposed model be attempted. It might be of interest if the authors can re-examine their data according to our proposed model