[Management of primary central nervous system lymphoma]

Abstract

Primary CNS lymphoma is the malignant brain tumor whose prognosis has improved the most the two past decades. The majority of the patients achieve a complete remission with treatment and a substantial minority may hope to be cured. The treatment includes high-dose methotrexate polychemotherapy combined or not with whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT). Elderly patients who are exposed to a high risk of treatment induced neurotoxicity need a specific management avoiding or defering WBRT. In young patients, the main questions concerning the treatment are the role of consolidation WBRT and intensive chemotherapy with peripheral blood stem cell rescue in the initial treatment of PCNSL. As recently shown, national and international collaborative efforts make now possible randomized trials for this rare disease, which would contribute to better define the treatment strategy. New insights in PCNSL tumorigenesis would help to better understand the heterogeneity of outcome and to develop efficient targeted therapies.