Survival outcomes for patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) substantially improved from 1995 to 2013, particularly for those with advanced-stage tumors, according to a retrospective analysis.
The median overall survival for the study period was 52 months and 57 months in two cancer databases.
“Over the past 20 years, many novel agents and treatment regimens have been developed to treat MCL,” Shuangshuang Fu, PhD, of the University of Texas, Houston, and her colleagues wrote in Cancer Epidemiology.
The researchers retrospectively studied population-based data from two separate databases: the national Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database and the Texas Cancer Registry (TCR). They identified all adult patients who received a new diagnosis of MCL between Jan. 1, 1995, and Dec. 31, 2013.
A total of 9,610 patients were included in the study: 7,555 patients from SEER and 2,055 from the TCR. The team collected data related to MCL diagnosis, mortality, and other variables, including age at diagnosis, marital status, sex, and tumor stage.
In total, 76.2% and 61.6% of patients from the SEER and TCR databases, respectively, had an advanced-stage tumor.
Dr. Fu and her colleagues found that all-cause mortality rates in both groups were significantly reduced from 1995 to 2013 (SEER, P less than .001; TCR, P = .03).
In addition, the team reported that the median overall survival time for all patients in the SEER database was 52 months, and it was 57 months for the TCR database.
“MCL patients with [an] advanced stage tumor benefitted most from the introduction of newly developed regimens,” they added.
The researchers acknowledged that a key limitation of the study was the inability to assess treatment regimen–specific survival, which could only be estimated with these data.
“The findings of our study further confirmed the impact of novel agents on improved survival over time that was shown in other studies,” they wrote.
The study was supported by grant funding from the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas and the National Institutes of Health. The researchers reported having no conflicts of interest.
SOURCE: Fu S et al. Cancer Epidemiol. 2019 Feb;58:89-97.