Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare database, we investigated the relative benefits of adding rituximab to CHOP chemotherapy in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) of extranodal origin, and found similar advantage for nodal and extranodal lymphomas. Hazard ratio for overall survival was 0.64 for nodal, and 0.70 for extranodal DLBCL. Hazard ratios for lymphoma-related death were 0.62 and 0.57, respectively. The advantage was largest for DLBCL of the spleen, liver and lung. Conversely, it was not evident for thyroid or testicular lymphomas. Compared with nodal DLBCL, spleen was the only site with significantly better prognosis after R-CHOP.
Keywords: Comparative effectiveness research; Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma; R-CHOP chemotherapy; Rituximab; SEER program.
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