Peripheral T cell lymphomas account for approximately 10 % of all the non-Hodgkin lymphomas and are characterized by an aggressive clinical course and poor treatment outcome. In contrast to the improvement in the treatment of B cell lymphomas, there is no established standard chemotherapy regimen for relapsed/refractory T cell lymphomas. Our institute introduced modified ESHAP (mESHAP) regimen to reduce renal toxicity of standard ESHAP therapy, in which cisplatin was switched to carboplatin. We retrospectively analyzed the efficacy of mESHAP against relapsed/refractory T cell lymphomas. Twenty-two patients with relapsed/refractory T cell lymphomas were treated with mESHAP regimen at the University of Tokyo Hospital between January 2001 and December 2012. The median age was 59 years (range, 36-77). The diagnosis comprised peripheral T cell lymphoma, not otherwise specified (n = 10), angioimmunoblastic T cell lymphoma (AITL; n = 9), mycosis fungoides (n = 1), and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-negative anaplastic large cell lymphoma (n = 2). The median follow-up period was 9.5 months (range, 2.5-62.3). Complete remission (CR) was achieved in four patients (18 %) and partial remission (PR) in three patients (14 %). The median overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were 11.0 and 2.5 months, respectively. Leukopenia was the most frequent side effect and renal impairment was rare. According to a multivariate analysis, better OS and PFS were recorded in patients without bone marrow invasion (OS, hazard ratio (HR) 0.13, p = 0.0079; PFS, HR 0.13, p = 0.0044) or those with AITL (OS, HR 0.21, p = 0.021; PFS, HR 0.15, p = 0.0043). Although overall outcomes of mESHAP for relapsed/refractory T cell lymphomas were not excellent, this regimen remains one of the possible candidates for those with AITL histology or without bone marrow invasion.