The Treatment of Patients With Aggressive Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma

The curability of the aggressive, large-cell lymphomas was first convincingly reported by Levitt et al in 1972.[1] Patients with “reticulum cell sarcoma” were treated with a regimen that came to be known as COMLA (cyclophosphamide, vincristine [Oncovin], methotrexate, leucovorin, cytarabine [Ara-C]). A more commonly quoted paper was published in 1975 by DeVita et al describing the cure of advanced “diffuse histiocytic lymphoma” with COPP (cyclophosphamide, vincristine [Oncovin], procarbazine, prednisone).[2] During the 1970s the CHOP regimen (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin HCl, vincristine [Oncovin], prednisone) was described by McKelvey et al[3]; it quickly became the most widely used treatment for the aggressive large-cell lymphomas. Patients treated with two cycles of CHOP beyond documentation of a complete remission were often cured.[4]