Guideline for the diagnosis and management of marginal zone lymphomas: a british society of haematology guideline

Abstract

SCOPE The objective of this guideline is to provide healthcare professionals with clear guidance on the diagnosis and management of patients with marginal zone lymphoma (MZL).

METHODOLOGY These guidelines were compiled according to the BSH process: https://b-s-h.org.uk/media/16732/bsh-guidance-development-process-dec-5-18.pdf.

The Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) nomenclature was used to evaluate levels of evidence and to assess the strength of recommendations. The GRADE criteria can be found at http://www.gradeworkinggroup.org.

Recommendations are based on a review of the literature using Medline/Pubmed. Search terms included: marginal zone, MZL, extranodal MZL, MALT, nodal, splenic, treatment, randomised, clinical trial, radioimmunotherapy, hepatitis C, Helicobacter pylori. The search was limited to English language publications and conference abstracts from 1 January 1998 to 20 September 2022. Titles/abstracts obtained were curated and manually reviewed by the writing group, which conducted additional searches using subsection heading terms.

The manuscript was reviewed by the BSH Guidelines Haemato-oncology Task Force, the BSH Guidelines Executive Committee and the haemato-oncology sounding board of the BSH.