Primary gastrointestinal lymphoma in an Egyptian district: A study using a population-based cancer registry

Introduction: gastrointestinal lymphoma (gil) is the most common extranodal form of non-hodgkin's lymphoma (nhl) with geographical and age variation of its various subtypes. aim: to study gil in gharbiah,egypt and to recognize the treatments employed and their outcomes including survival. methods: this is a retrospective study. between 2000 and 2002,40 adult patients with gil were identified in the gharbiah population based cancer registry (gpbcr); 26 cases of whom were treated at tanta cancer center (tcc). results: gil in gharbiah,egypt represented 6.2% of all git cancers. the median age was 47. years with slight male predominance. the commonest primary site was the stomach followed by the colon/rectum then the small intestine (67.5%,25% and 7.5%,respectively). the commonest histological subtypes were the diffuse large b-cell (41.5%) followed by marginal zone b-cell (39%). the commonest symptoms were abdominal pains followed by vomiting. only 18% of gils were surgically resected. most patients (77%) received chemotherapy with a 60% complete response (cr) rate. once in cr,relapses are occasional. the median overall survival (os) and progression free survival (pfs) were 31 and 14. months (95% ci,13.2-48.7 and 6.4-21.6. months,respectively). gastric primary site and diffuse large b cell subtype carry a non-significant worse os and pfs than those of other sites and subtypes. conclusions: gils in gharbiah,egypt are characterized by predominance of male gender,gastric site and marginal zone histology. survival is worse for gastric and diffuse large b-cell gils compared to other sites and histologies. © 2013.