Incidence of relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) including CNS relapse in a population-based cohort of 4243 patients in Sweden

We performed a national population-based study of all patients diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in Sweden in 2007–2014 to assess treatment intent and risk of relapsed/refractory disease, including central nervous system (CNS) relapse, in the presence of competing risks. Overall, 84% of patients started treatment with curative intent (anthracycline-based) (n = 3550, median age 69 years), whereas 14% did not (n = 594, median age 84 years) (for 2% the intent was uncertain). Patients treated with curative intent had a 5-year OS of 65.3% (95% CI: 63.7–66.9). The median OS among non-curatively treated patients was 2.9 months. The 5-year cumulative incidence of relapsed/refractory disease in curative patients was 23.1% (95% CI: 21.7–24.6, n = 847). The 2-year cumulative incidence of CNS relapse was 3.0% (95% CI: 2.5–3.6, n = 118) overall, and 8.0% (95% CI: 6.0–10.6, n = 48) among patients with high CNS-IPI (4–6), when considering other relapse locations and death as competing events. The incidence of relapsed/refractory DLBCL overall and in the CNS was lower than in previous reports, still one in seven patients was not considered fit enough to start standard immunochemotherapy at diagnosis. These results are important for quantification of groups of DLBCL patients with poor prognosis requiring completely different types of interventions.