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Objective and importance: Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) is a well-curable disease. The treatment usually includes combined multiagent conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy. One-fifth of the patients need repeated treatments because of relapse or primary progressive disease. Those HL patients, who cannot be cured at least with salvage therapy (including autologous haemopoietic stem cell transplantation (auto-HSCT)), have really unfavourable prognosis. Intervention: For this heavily pretreated subset of HL patients, novel but less toxic treatment strategies should be considered. Brentuximab-vedotin (BV) is a novel targeted treatment option, which was administered after the failure of two different regimens in patients, who were ineligible for auto-HSCT or after the failure of auto- HSCT. Moreover, there are favourable data with chemotherapeutical regimens supplemented with rituximab not only in relapsed but also in newly diagnosed classical HL patients. Bendamustine, an almost forgotten 50-year-old drug, lives its renaissance in the twenty-first century, which can be administered in refractory HL as well. Combination of the 'new' and 'old' drugs might be also helpful. Conclusion: Our data suggest that rituximab plus bendamustine (supplemented with or without BV) could be a suitable alternative bridging salvage therapy for heavily pretreated HL patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma primary of lung (DLBCL-PL) is a rare presentation of extranodal lymphoma, in most cases chemotherapy-based anthracyclines: CHOP (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) has been the treatment, with excellent outcome. The addition of rituximab to CHOP (R-CHOP) has been considered the gold standard in the treatment of nodal DLBCL. Thus, we assess in a large number of cases of DLBCL-PL whether the use of R-CHOP could improve survival in this setting of patients. Forty-two patients with DLBCL-PL, stage IE, age 65 years or younger, were treated with standard R-CHOP, no consolidation radiotherapy or maintenance therapy were considered. They were matched with patients who received CHOP alone to assess efficacy and toxicity. Complete response was observed in 35 patients (83%), and 7 patients were considered failure (16%). The study has a median follow-up of 42.8 months. Actuarial curves at 5 years showed that progression-free survival was 88 % and overall survival was 70 %. The results were not statistically different when compared retrospectively with patients who received CHOP alone. Treatment was well tolerated. The addition of rituximab to chemotherapy did not improve outcome in patients with DLBCL-PL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]