Comparison of adjuvant radiotherapy and chemoradiotherapy following surgery in stage IE and IIE primary gastrointestinal tract non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Forty patients (median age 49.6 years) were treated for primary gastrointestinal lymphoma between 1979 and 1989. There were twenty-three cases of gastric lymphoma and seventeen cases of intestinal lymphoma. Following surgery, seventeen patients received postoperative chemoradiotherapy (ACOP) by the sandwich technique, seven patients received postoperative radiotherapy, and sixteen patients did not receive any other form of adjuvant treatment. Nineteen patients were stage IE and twenty-one were stage IIE. Stage IE disease was more prevalent in the gastric lymphoma group than the intestinal lymphoma group (p less than 0.01). At a median follow-up of 17 months (1-102 + months), 17 of 19 stage IE patients and 15 of 21 stage IIE patients remained alive. The survival rate was 90% in the postoperative chemoradiotherapy group and 83.3% in the postoperative radiotherapy group at five years, and 42.7% in the surgery alone group at four years, which showed statistical significance (p less than 0.01, p less than 0.05, each). Statistically improved survival rates were achieved with a postoperative chemoradiotherapy modality in intestinal lymphoma (p less than 0.01), stage IIE (p less than 0.01), intermediate grade by NCI criteria (p less than 0.01), poorly differentiated lymphocytic lymphoma (p less than 0.05), and diffuse histiocytic lymphoma (p less than 0.01) according to Rappaport classification, compared to those of the surgically treated only group. Three local relapses occurred in the operation alone group, and one in the adjuvant radiotherapy group which occurred simultaneously with distant lymph node recurrence. The pathologic stage of all of these relapsed patients was stage IIE-2. These results suggest that adjuvant chemoradiotherapy in completely resected localized gastrointestinal non-Hodgkin's lymphoma can decrease local and systemic relapse resulting in long-term disease free survival and overall survival compared to operation alone.