Associations of time from diagnosis to treatment and intercycle delays with mortality and recurrence in non-hodgkin lymphoma and hodgkin lymphoma patients

Lymphoma is the 5th most common cancer. It is divided into two main subtypes which are Hodgkin an non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Aside from other cancer types researchs showed that time form diagnosis to treatment hasn't had any affect or has had conflicting affects, and there have been only a few research about intercycle delays and their effect to mortality. The aim of our study is to observe associations of time from diagnosis to treatment and intercycle delays with mortality and recurrence in lymphoma patients. 340 patients were investigated retrospectively. Of all the 340 patients 53,8% (n=183) had B cell lymphoma, 42,4% (n=144) had classic Hodgkin lymphoma, 2,6% (n=9) had T cell lymphoma and 1,2% (n=4) had noduler lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma. At first all patients were evaluated in a single cluster and found no association between time from diagnosis to treatment with mortality and recurrence rates. İntercycle delay longer than 14 days were found to be associated with higher mortality (Log Rank-Mantel Cox value p=0,015) (p<0,05). After that we divided cluster into two parts. No associations were found between time from diagnosis to treatment and intercycle delays with mortality and recurrence rates in the Hodgkin lymphoma group. No associations were found between time from diagnosis to treatment with mortality and recurrence rates in B cell lymphoma group. İntercycle delays between 7 and 14 days and longer than 14 days were found to be associated with higher mortality (Log Rank-Mantel Cox value p=0,045) (p<0,05) (Log Rank-Mantel Cox value p=0,004) (p<0,05). This study is one of the rare studies that investigates intercycle delays. In conclusion, a significant statistical relation was found between the prolonged intercycle delays and mortality rates in B cell lymphoma. Key Words:Time from diagnosis to treatment, intercycle delay, lymphoma