Angiofollicular Lymph Node Hyperplasia(Castleman's disease): 3 cases report

Park, Jeong Hee; Han, Gil Ro; Chang, Hee Jin; Sohn, Jin Hee; Suh, Jung Il

Abstract

Angiofollicular lymph node hyperplasia(AFLNH) was first described in 1956 by Castleman et al. It was initially reported as a solitary mediastinal mass but multicentric and extranodal disease is now well known. Histologically two distinct variants, e.g. the hyaline vascular type and the plasma cell type, of AFLNH are recognized. And the plasma cell type is typically associated with clinical syndrome consisting of fever, anemia, elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate and polyclonal hypergammaglobulinemia. Recently, we experineced three cases of AFLNH. Histologically, two cases were hyaline vascular type, that were presented as a right supraclavicular mass of 49-year-old female, and as an anterior mediastinal mass of 53-year-old female. The remaining one case was plasma cell type that was presented as a left axillary mass of 63-year-old male. The former two cases showed typical features of hyaline vascular type but in case 1, exuberant proliferation of hyalinized vessels of capillary size was characteristic feature. The latter case of plasma cell type characteristically showed clinical syndrome consisting of fever, hypoalbuminemia, polyclonal hypergammaglobulinemia. All cases were presented as a single mass and they were well after surgical excision.