An Epidemiological Study on Survival in Lymphoma of Mucosa-Associated Lymphoid Tissue: A Comparative Analysis by Primary Tumor Location.

PURPOSE: To investigate outcome and local treatment strategy for extranodal mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma patients.

METHODS

Retrospectively collected patients using the data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database, including tumor sites with over 200 cases.

RESULTS

The cohort comprised 3842 patients, with the gastric region being the most prevalent site (34.9%), followed by salivary gland (16.8%), cutaneous (16.5%), pulmonary (13.3%), intestinal (13.2%), and head and neck (5.4%). The 10-year cancer-specific survival (CSS) was 88.1%, 92.6%, 86.5%, 87.7%, 89.7%, and 97.7% in patients with tumors located in the gastric, salivary gland, pulmonary, head and neck, intestinal, and cutaneous, respectively (p < 0.001). Compared to gastric MALT lymphoma, the cutaneous site exhibited superior CSS (p < 0.001), whereas other sites showed comparable outcomes (all p ≥ 0.05). In gastric MALT lymphoma cases, radiotherapy was associated with better CSS than surgery alone (p < 0.001), while no significant difference was observed between surgery plus radiotherapy versus surgery alone (p = 0.561). Treatment outcomes were similar across the three therapeutic modalities for non-gastric sites.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings underscore the biological and clinical heterogeneity of extranodal MALT lymphoma. While localized treatments provide equivalent results across most non-gastric sites, radiotherapy is recommended as the primary noninvasive treatment option.