Malignant lymphomas.A clinical study of 800 Indian patients

IST a common meeting ground for the various therapeutic and ancillary disciplines in medicine.I t is the aim of this paper to present a review of the clinical material seen at this institution during a 20-year period.A total of 800 histologically proved cases of malignant lymphomas were seen at the Tata Memorial Hospital from 1941 through 1960.This gives a hospital incidence of 2.34% of all cancer cases.Table 1 presents the frequency of malignant lymphomas relative to the total number of malignant neoplasms seen in various countries.T h e figure for our series is that seen at our institution only; we have, therefore, compared only the relative frequencies.No age correction was contemplated as the data of the Tata Memorial Hospital do not include all the cancer cases in the country; data on the latter are, as yet, unavailable. AGE AND SEXFigure 1 shows the distribution by age and sex.A marked male preponderance is striking -4.5 to 1.This is significant when it is realized that, of the total hospital attendance, the male-to-female ratio was 1.4 to 1 and that, of all patients with malignant neoplasms seen at this hospital, the ratio was 1.9 to 1.This high male preponderance in malignant lymphomas does not seem to change with tumor type (i.e., lymphosarcoma 4.3 to 1, Hodgkin's disease 5.4 to 1, and reticulum-cell sarcoma Table 2 compares the present sex ratio with that in comparable series.Rappaport et al.5 reported a very high male preponderance (4.6 to 1); however, their series was drawn from a predominantly male population and does not reflect the true sex incidence.It is thus interesting to observe the very high incidence in male patients in our series. to 1).