A retrospective study of 202 patients with clinical stage 1 and I1 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma managed at St. Bartholomew's Hospital between 1972 and 1985 was conducted. Patients were treated either with radiotherapy alone, radiotherapy and adjuvant chemotherapy, or chemotherapy (with or without adjuvant radiotherapy). At the onset of the study it was intended that all patients with localized NHL should be treated with involved field radiotherapy and adjuvant 'CVP. As it became apparent that this was inadequate for some patients and too toxic for others a flexible approach was later adopted. Treatment selection depended on age, volume, distribution of disease and histological subtype.
The actuarial 5 year overall survival for the whole group was 70 per cent. Death from lymphoma after 5 years was very rare. Increasing age and high grade histology were highly significant adverse prognostic factors by multivariate analysis. The results for patients with high grade and low grade histology were therefore analysed separately, as was the outcome for patients presenting with either gastrointestinal or skin lymphomas.
During the latter part of the study period intensive chemotherapy was given as the initial treatment to patients with high grade histology and bulky, or stage I1 disease. Twenty out of 24 patients so treated achieved complete remission and only one has relapsed to date. These results are encouraging and probably explain the absence of a difference in prognosis between patients with stage I and IE disease and those with stage I1 and IIE disease observed over the whole period of the study. Remission was achieved in the overwhelming majority of patients with low grade histology for whom radiotherapy was selected as primary therapy. Duration of remission was better in patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy than in those treated with radiation alone, but no difference in overall survival was observed between these groups. Neither stage nor the presence of a follicular histological pattern correlated with prolonged survival in patients with low grade histology.