[Clinico-morphologic reconsideration of anaplastic lymphoma. Retrospective study of 60 patients with aggressive clinical course and multiple recurrences].

Purpose: To identify anaplastic large cell lymphoma Ki-1+ (ALCL-Ki-1+) among a group of patients with aggressive Hodgkin's disease (HD) and to know the biological behaviour of the neoplasia (ALCL-Ki-1+).

Patients And Methods: Biopsies and clinical data of sixty patients with previous morphological diagnosis of HD lymphocytic depletion (LD), syncytial variant of nodular esclerosis (NE-II) and other subtypes of HD with aggressive clinical features were reviewed. A morphological, immunohistochemical (IHQ), proliferative and flow cytometric (FCM) studies were performed in lymph node biopsies.

Results: Morphological study and IHQ identify three groups: 15 patients (25%) lymphocytic predominance (LP) HD, 36 (60%) ALCL-Ki-1+ and 9 (15%) of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and unclassifiable cases. Nine cases of LP show anaplastic and variable immunophenotype being the rest of B-cell nature. 75% of LP patients showed long survival and frequent second neoplasias (47%). ALCL-Ki-1+ group had good initial response to therapy (84%) and multiple relapses, 67% showed CD15 positive marker (the so-called ALCL-HD related).

Conclusions: A retrospective study of a selected group of patients previously diagnosed of aggressive HD showed different pathological subtypes: LP, LP with anaplastic areas, ALCL-Ki-1+ Hr (Hodgkin's related) and ALCL-Ki-1+ (classical type), all of them were CD30+, which could represent different stages of the same neoplasia.