Autologous bone marrow transplantation in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

We retrospectively analyzed the factors influencing the mononuclear cell (MNC) yield on bone marrow (BM) harvests in a cohort of 15 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients undergoing autologous bone marrow transplantation. All the patients were treated with the F-MACHOP regimen and four of them also received radiotherapy on bulky disease. Before harvesting, the patients underwent complete peripheral blood (PB) count, BM biopsy and aspirate. WBC and MNC/microL were determined on the pre-harvest PB and BM aspirate samples using an automated counter. The following variables were examined in univariate and multivariate regression analysis for possible influence on the MNC yield in the harvests: age, sex, number of cycles of CT, previous radiotherapy, state of the disease at the time of harvest, interval between the end of therapy and BM harvest, cellularity of the BM biopsy, absolute WBC and MNC counts in the PB before harvesting, absolute WBC and MNC counts in the BM aspirate performed before harvesting. The amount of marrow harvested was constant for all patients: 21.2 +/- 0.24 microL/kg B.W. Among the factors analyzed, two correlated strongly with the MNC yield/kg B.W. in the harvests: the MNC count in pre-harvest PB (r = 0.823; p = 0.0001) and the MNC count in pre-harvest BM aspirate (r = 0.802; p = 0.0003). A regression equation was generated that allows calculation of the MNC/kg yield prior to harvesting.