Lymph node infarction foreshadowing malignant lymphoma

Abstract

A completely infarcted lymph node should alert the pathologist and clinician to the high probability of the patient having malignant lymphoma. Sixteen untreated patients are presented whose initial lymph node biopsies showed complete infarction. Of these 13 (81%) had malignant lymphoma on rebiopsy after periods ranging from 2 days to 6 months (mean 2.7 months).