Relapsed Marginal Zone B-Cell Lymphoma: Clinical Features and Treatment Outcome.

Marginal zone B-cell lymphoma (MZL) has an indolent clinical course and long survival. During its long survival duration, MZL has tendency to relapse frequently. But the natural history and an optimal treatment modality for relapsed MZL has yet to be well established. So we performed a retrospective analysis of identifying the clinical features and outcomes of relapsed MZL.

From 1994 to 2008, a total of 92 patients with relapsed MZL were analyzed retrospectively.

The median age of our subjects was 53.5 years (range: 23-82 years). This study involved 51 males (55.4%) and 41 females (44.6%). The most common primary sites of involvement were orbit and ocular adnexa (28.3%) followed by lymph node and lymphatic organs (23.9%), and multiple MALT sites (13.0%). The median time to relapse from initial diagnosis was 25.5 months (range: 1.6- 137 months). Of the 53 patients with stage I or II at diagnosis, 42 patients (79.2%) had been shown the loco-regional recurrence. Among these loco-regional relapsed patients, 27 patients were achieved CR (54.1%) or PR (18.9%). The other 11 patients (20.8%) had advanced stage at recurrence.

Adding to 39 patients initially advanced stage III or IV, totally 50 patients were advanced stage at relapse. Of these patients with advanced stage at relapse, 44 patients had been treated. The overall response rate was 54.5% (24 patients), with 18 CRs and 6 PRs.

The median time to progression (TTP) was 34.1 months (95% CI: 11.3-56.9 months) and the estimated 5-year OS was 84.3%.

Loco-regional recurrence was more dominant than distant metastases in stage I or II MZL regardless of treatment modality. Even though patients had relapsed MZL after initial treatment, most of them were well controlled with salvage treatment and could achieve prolong survival.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.