No abstract

Summary In a population-based registry of 580 patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) 54 patients had a primary gastric lymphoma, 42 an intestinal, 113 a primary extranodal lymphoma localised elsewhere than in the gastrointestinal tract and 371 a primary nodal NHL. Histological specimens were reviewed by a panel of pathologists and classified according to the Kiel classification and the International Working Formulation. The 4-year survival rates for primary gastric, intestinal, other extranodal and nodal NHL ranged from 50 to 60%; the 4-year recurrence-free survival rates were 50%, 35%, 19% and 19%, respectively. Among patients with localised intermediate-grade disease survival for those with gastric NHL was better than for those with intestinal lymphoma. Because it is population-based, our study cohort was not subjected to exclusion due to age, performance scale, etc. and therefore provides a more realistic picture of the occurrence and presentation of as well as prognosis for lymphoma in the population.

Addition of continuously administered carboplatin as radiosensitizer for locally unresectable NSCLC does not improve local tumor control or overall survival.

Background:Organisational external peer review was introduced in 1994 in the Netherlands to improve multidisciplinary cancer care. We examined the clinical impact of this programme on colorectal cancer care.Methods:Patients with primary colorectal cancer were included from 23 participating hospitals and 7 controls. Hospitals from the intervention group were dichotomised by their implementation proportion (IP) of the recommendations from each peer review (high IP vs low IP). Outcome measures were the introduction of new multidisciplinary therapies and survival.Results:In total, 45 705 patients were included (1990–2010). Patients from intervention hospitals more frequently received adjuvant chemotherapy for stage III colon cancer. T2–3/M0 rectal cancer patients from hospitals with a high IP had a higher chance of receiving preoperative radiotherapy (OR 1.31, 95% CI 1.11–1.55) compared with the controls and low IP group (OR 0.75, 95% CI 0.63–0.88). There were no differences in the use of preoperative chemoradiation for T4/M0 rectal cancer. Survival was slightly higher in colon cancer patients from intervention hospitals but unrelated to the phase of the programme in which the hospital was at the time of diagnosis.Conclusions:Some positive effects of external peer review on cancer care were found, but the results need to be interpreted cautiously due to the ambiguity of the outcomes and possible confounding factors.

Potentially curable recurrences were detected primarily by liver imaging and colonoscopy. The yield of CEA measurement, chest radiography and physical examination was relatively low; such methods were expensive and should not be recommended in the routine follow-up of these patients.