Early stage follicular lymphoma: What is the clinical impact of the first-line treatment strategy?

Background: Less than 20% of patients with follicular lymphoma (FL) present with Ann Arbor Stage I or II disease at diagnosis. Numerous therapeutic options exist, however radiation therapy is considered the standard of care for early-stage disease based on single-institution or retrospective series. Our aim was to revisit the outcome of patients with localized FL in the rituximab era. Patients and Methods. We analyzed the characteristics and outcomes of 145 early-stage FL patients, who were retrospectively divided into six groups according to their initial treatment: watchful waiting (WW), chemotherapy alone (CT), radiotherapy alone (RT), combined radiotherapy and chemotherapy (RT-CT), rituximab alone (Ri), and immunochemotherapy (Ri-CT). Results: Of the 145 patients, 84 (57.9%) had stage I disease and 61 (42.1%) stage II. The complete response (CR) rate varied from 57% for the Ri group to 95% for the RT-CT group. Overall survival (OS) at 7.5 y of patients treated after 2000 was better than that of those treated prior to 2000. OS did not significantly differ from one treatment to another. In contrast, a significant difference was found for progression-free survival (PFS) at 7.5 y, which favored Ri-CT (60%) therapy versus the others (p=0.00135). Conclusion: Delayed therapy initiation was associated with a similar OS than that observed in patients receiving immediate intervention. The "watchful waiting" strategy may thus be proposed as first-line therapy, similar to stage III and IV FL patients with a low tumor burden. However, when treatment is required, immunochemotherapy appears to be the best option. © 2013 Michallet et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd