Efficacy of chemotherapy protocols for hematological malignancies: H-CVAD versus GELA/BURKIMAB/PETHEMA LAL.

The hyper-CVAD/methotrexate–cytarabine (H-CVAD/ MTX-AraC) chemotherapy protocol has been one of the standard treatments for hematological malignancies, such as mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), Burkitt lymphoma (BL), and B-cell and T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Because results of this therapy are poor, it has been progressively replaced with new specific regimens with better efficacy profiles (GELA protocol for MCL, BURKIMAB for BL, and PETHEMA for B-cell and T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia [ALL]). The objective of this study was to analyze the response rates and survival of these therapeutic regimens. This retrospective and descriptive observational study of 81 patients compared 42 patients treated with hyper-CVAD/methotrexate–cytarabine (group A) with 39 patients treated with GELA/BURKIMAB/PETHEMA (group B). More patients in group B than in group A completed the treatment (89.7% vs. 47.6%, p