Granulomatosis after autologous stem cell transplantation in nonHodgkin lymphoma – experience of single institution and a review of literature
Article Category: Review Article
Published Online: Nov 09, 2016
Page range: 355 - 359
Received: May 21, 2015
Accepted: Jun 30, 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/raon-2015-0033
© 2016 Radiol Oncol
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Background
Sarcoidosis before and after treatment of malignancy is an important differential diagnosis that has to be distinguished from lymphoma.
Patients and methods
Hodgkin lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and aggressive follicular lymphoma are being staged and treatment effect is evaluated with PET-CT. We report three cases of aggressive lymphoma after high dose therapy and autologous stem cell transplantation with positive lymph nodes on PET-CT, which were histologically diagnosed as sarcoidosis/granulomatosis. In the literature, we found that false positive lymph nodes were more common after allogeneic than after autologous transplantation.
Conclusions
Post-treatment PET-CT positive lymph nodes should always be examined histologically prior to any further treatment decision to avoid unnecessary toxic procedures.