• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.16-21
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• 1996

Lymphomatoid granulomatosis, polymorphic reticulosis, midline malignant reticulosis, or lethal midline granuloma have similar histologic features of an angiocentric and angiodestructive lymphoreticular proliferation representing the same nosologic entity. The term 'angiocentric immunoproliferative lesion' (AIL) was proposed by Jaffe, Costa, and Martin. The malignant potential of AILs is originally uncertain, but the facts that AILs have a relatively short survival, and most of them usually progress to an overt malignant lymphoma and survival is inversely proportional to the large, atypical lymphoreticular cells suggest that AILs are malignane. We experienced 17 AILs in nose during 16-year period and retrogradely analized them to recognize the problems in the diagnosis and to establish the further therapeutic strategies. The results were as follows; Twelve of total 17 patients who had diagnosed as histologic grade 1 and 2 had received radiation therapy as an initial treatment and the complete response rate was 91.7%(11/12), but 6 out of 11 had local recurrence and 5 had progress to overt maligant lymphoma within 2years. Three patients with the histologic grade 3 and 2 with unclear histologic grade had received CHOP chemotherapy and there was 1 case with complete response. Two patients with unclear histologic grade had been proved to be malignant histiocytosis by bone marrow biopsy during the clinical course. The overall duration of survival was 2 - 119 months and the 5-year survival rate was 71.9%. And the achievement of initial complete response was the most important prognostic factor of overall survival(P=0.006). Our results suggest that the treatment strategy according to the histologic grading scheme is efficient and more aggressive combination chemotherapy may be necessary to achieve complete response in patients with histologic grade III and II, because most of them progress to overt malignant lymphoma during its process.