Finally, surgery and radiation are additional therapies that can be used to relieve symptoms caused by bulky t-FL disease or to treat lesions in patients who cannot withstand other types of treatment. Transformed follicular lymphoma
Early studies on treating t-FL with various purely chemotherapy regimens gave poor results with median overall survival times of 1–2 years. However, the addition of rituximab to the regimens such as CVP and CHOP as part of induction and maintenance therapies (i.e. R-CVP and R-CHOP) greatly improved overall 5 year survival to rates of 73%. The R-CHOP regimen is a good option for treating such cases. However, these regimens need not be started in people with FL who are asymptomatic and have low tumor burdens: the outcomes in such patients show no difference between early versus delayed treatment. Some recent studies found that the use of rituximab in combination with bendamustine (i.e. the RB regimen) provided better results than R-CHOP: progression-free survival times in one study were 69.5 months for RB and 31.2 months for R-CHOP. Similar results were obtained when RB was compared to R-CVP. These studies also found no overall survival time benefit between the RB and R-CHOP regimens.
Left anterior fascicular block (LAFB) is an abnormal condition of the left ventricle of the heart, related to, but distinguished from, left bundle branch block (LBBB). It is caused by only the left anterior fascicle – one half of the left bundle branch being defective. It is manifested on the ECG by left axis deviation. It is much more common than left posterior fascicular block. Mechanism
Normal activation of the left ventricle (LV) proceeds down the left bundle branch, which consist of three fascicles, the left anterior fascicle, the left posterior fascicle, and the septal fascicle. The posterior fascicle supplies the posterior and inferoposterior walls of the LV, the anterior fascicle supplies the upper and anterior parts of the LV and the septal fascicle supplies the septal wall with innervation. LAFB — which is also known as left anterior hemiblock (LAHB) — occurs when a cardiac impulse spreads first through the left posterior fascicle, causing a delay in activation of the anterior and upper parts of the LV. Although there is a delay or block in activation of the left anterior fascicle there is still preservation of initial left to right septal activation as well as preservation of the inferior activation of the LV (preservation, on the EKG, of septal Q waves in I and aVL and predominantly negative QRS complex in leads II, III, and aVF). The delayed and unopposed activation of the remainder of the LV now results in a shift in the QRS axis leftward and superiorly, causing marked left axis deviation.