Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Primary lymphomas of the endocrine glands are extremely rare entities. We retrospectively evaluated the clinical profile and the patterns of outcome among patients who were treated in our center with the diagnosis of high-grade B-cell primary endocrine lymphomas.

Methods: Between May 1980 and August 2010, 450 patients were diagnosed as extranodal non Hodgkin Lymphomas (NHLs). Among them, 18 cases (4%) were primary testicular lymphomas (PTLs), eight cases (1.78%) were primary thyroid lymphomas (PTHLs), whereas four cases (0.89%) were primary adrenal lymphomas (PALs). The therapeutic approaches were variable, including chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy.

Results: Twelve of the PTLs patients (66.67%) achieved complete response (CR), 2 (11.11%) had partial response (PR) and 3 (16.67%) did not respond (NR). However, five of them (28%) relapsed within a median time of 21 months (range 4–52). On the other hand, all patients with PTHL obtained CR after front-line therapy. However, one patient relapsed 35 months after CR. Regarding the PAL patients one achieved CR, two had PR, whereas one did not respond. The responders relapsed shortly after treatment in a median time of 2.5 months.

The PTHLs had better outcome (median OS 43 months) in comparison to the PTLs (median OS 18.50 months) and the PALs (median OS 7 months), which had the worst prognosis.

Conclusions: We conclude that the adrenal lymphomas had the worse outcome. Given the rarity of these entities and the lack of standard therapy the existing treatment strategies for PTLs and PALs fail to provide long-term survival. Therefore, we suggest that new treatment protocols should be applied.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.