Long-term remission of blastic natural killer-cell lymphoma after autologous peripheral blood stem-cell transplantation.

We report here a case of blastic natural killer (NK)-cell lymphoma treated successfully with autologous peripheral blood stem-cell transplantation (APBSCT). A 57-year-old man had skin tumors and was diagnosed as having blastic NK-cell lymphoma by tumor biopsy. Skin, lymph nodes, left tonsil, and bone marrow were involved at presentation. Chemotherapy led to complete remission (CR). To sustain CR, the patient underwent high-dose chemotherapy in combination with 12 Gy of total-body irradiation (TBI) followed by autologous peripheral blood stem-cell rescue. He showed rapid recovery of hematopoiesis and could tolerate regimen-related toxicity after APBSCT. He has maintained long-term remission for 20 months after APBSCT. From this case, we concluded that APBSCT with preconditioning by TBI-containing regimens might be a cure-attaining treatment for disseminated blastic NK-cell lymphoma and should be considered as a choice of treatment in cases where no suitable donors for allogeneic transplantation are available. (c) 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.