Patients (n-987) with a histologically confirmed diagnosis of follicular lymphoma
were studied with the aim of developing a
prognostic model specifically devised for
this type of lymphoma. We collected
information on age, sex, Ann Arbor stage,
number of extranodal disease sites, bone
marrow (BM) involvement, bulky disease,
B symptom criteria (fever, night sweats,
and weight loss), performance status
(PS), serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH)
level, serum albumin level, hemoglobin
level, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate
(ESR). In the training sample of 429
patients with complete data, multivariate
analysis showed that age, sex, number of
extranodal sites, B symptoms, serum
LDH level, and ESR were factors predictive for overall survival. Using these 6
variables, a prognostic model was devised to identify 3 groups at different risk.
The 5- and 10-year survival rate was 90%
and 65% for patients at low risk, respectively; 75% and 54% for patients at
intermediate risk; and 38% and 11% for
those at high risk (log-rank test, 86.62;
P F .0001). The model was also predictive (P 5 .0001) in the validation sample
of 265 patients with complete data only
for the 6 variables used in the development of the model and even in the group
of 210 patients from the validation sample
uniformly treated with doxorubicin-containing regimens (P 5 .0001). The prognostic model appears to be very useful in
identifying patients with follicular lymphoma at low, intermediate, or high risk