Maintenance Therapy After R‐bendamustine vs R‐chop in First‐line Treatment of Low‐grade Follicular Lymphoma: A Multicentre, Retrospective Geltamo Study

Abstract

A propensity-matched cohort of 2029 patients treated with BR and 2029 patients treated with R-CVP/CHOP were included. The median age of patients was 64 years and 48% were female in the cohort. A majority of patients had a diagnosis of follicular lymphoma (59.3% of patients treated with BR, 59.7% of patients treated with R-CVP/CHOP, p = 0.88). Median follow-up time was 41 and 87 months for patients treated with BR and R-CVP/CHOP, respectively.In this well-matched cohort, BR was associated with a significant improvement in survival compared to R-CVP/CHOP (HR 0.76, 95% CI 0.67-0.88, p < 0.01). Five-year OS was 80% and 75% for patients treated with BR and R-CVP/CHOP, respectively (Figure 1). A total of 974 patients died during the follow-up period (331 treated with BR, 643 treated with R-CVP/CHOP), of which 875 had causes of death available. A majority of patients in both groups died from lymphoma (63.2% treated with BR, 66.4% treated with R-CVP/CHOP). Death from secondary malignancies was less common (11.8% treated with BR, 12.8% treated with R-CVP/CHOP). Few patients died from infection (6.2% treated with BR, 3.2% treated with R-CVP/CHOP). Conclusions:Our study demonstrates improved OS with BR compared to R-CVP/CHOP for patients with previously untreated indolent lymphoma. Cause of death in both cohorts was most frequently attributable to lymphoma. This supports BR as the standard of care for treatment of symptomatic indolent lymphoma.