Elsevier

Annals of Oncology

Volume 21, Issue 9, September 2010, Pages 1877-1883
Annals of Oncology

original articles
hematologic malignancies
FDG–PET in the assessment of patients with follicular lymphoma treated by ibritumomab tiuxetan Y 90: multicentric study

https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdq024Get rights and content
Under an Elsevier user license
open archive

Abstract

Background

The aim of this study is the 2-[fluorine-18]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG)–positron emission tomography (PET) evaluation following radioimmunotherapy (RIT) with ibritumomab tiuxetan Y 90 in patients with non-Hodgkin’s follicular lymphoma (FL).

Materials and methods

We retrospectively analyzed data from 59 relapsed or refractory FL patients treated with ibritumomab tiuxetan Y 90 in four different PET centers who had a PET scan carried out before and after RIT. Possible predictive factors of progression-free survival (PFS) were studied through univariate and multivariate analysis.

Results

The post-RIT PET documented 45.8% complete responders (CR), 25.4% partial responders (PR) and 28.8% nonresponders [stable disease + progressive disease], with an overall survival of 71.2% (range 59.5%–90.9%). With a median follow-up period of 23 months, the univariate analysis documented a statistically significant relation between disease extent before RIT and response to treatment with respect to PFS (P = 0.015), while all the other prognostic factors showed no significant correlation. When carrying out the multivariate analysis, post-RIT PET resulted as the lonely independent predictor of PFS (P < 0.00001).

Conclusions

RIT is an effective therapy in FL patients, as confirmed in our study too. Disease extension before treatment and response to RIT, as assessed by FDG–PET, result as main predictors of PFS, with the post-RIT PET result being the only independent predictive factor.

Keywords

follicular lymphoma
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
PET
radioimmunotherapy
ibritumomab tiuxetan Y 90

Cited by (0)