Central nervous system recurrence of systemic lymphoma in the era of stem cell transplantation - An international primary central nervous system lymphoma study group project

Autologous stem cell transplantation has greatly improved the prognosis of systemic recurrent non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. However, no prospective data are available concerning the feasibility and efficacy of this strategy for systemic lymphoma relapsing in the central nervous system. We, therefore, we performed an international multicenter retrospective study of patients with a central nervous system recurrence of systemic lymphoma to assess the outcome of these patients in the era of stem cell transplantation. We collected clinical and treatment data on patients with a first central nervous system recurrence of systemic lymphoma treated between 2000 and 2010 in one of five centers in four countries. Patient- and treatment-related factors were analyzed and compared descriptively. Primary outcome measures were overall survival and percentage of patients transplanted. We identified 92 patients, with a median age of 59 years and a median Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group/World Health Organization performance