For pediatric patients with localized diffuse large B-cell lymphoma being treated per COG ANHL 1131 in group B, do you feel it is necessary to complete all lumbar punctures with IT therapy?   

For unresected group B/DLBL patients, most centers continue to give the IT therapy which included 9 prophylactic IT therapies. There is no published data that I am aware of reducing the IT dosing. We recently completed a pilot reducing the number of ITs to 5 by incorporating 2 doses of depocyt (whic...

I agree with @Goldman that there is no evidence for reducing the number of IT treatments for patients treated according to ANHL 1131. But, notably, other successful treatments for stage 2 DLBCL use many fewer IT treatments. The NHL-BFM treatments include only 4 IT treatments for R2 risk group, which...