Discussion
Diagnosis With Brief Discussion
- Diagnosis
- Intravascular lymphomatosis
- Radiologic Findings
- Figs 1. Chest PA shows diffuse faint nodular increased opacity in both lungs.
Fig 2-4. Lung window setting of the chest CT scan shows diffuse GGO and subtle centrilobular GGO nodules in both lungs.
Fig 5. FDG-PET image shows diffuse elevated FDG uptake at the corresponding areas of abnormality on CT images.
- Brief Review
- Intravascular lymphomatosis (IVL), also known as malignant endotheliomatosis or angiotropic large-cell lymphoma, is a rare and distinctive form of malignant lymphoma characterized by the proliferation of neoplastic lymphoid cells, mostly of B-cell origin, in the vascular lumina. The disease can affect vessels in any organ.
The clinical features of IVL are nonspecific, but IVL most commonly manifests as fever of unknown origin, weight loss, night sweats, dementia, and cutaneous nodules or plaques. With vascular occlusion of various organs and attendant diverse and confusing clinical presentations, the diagnosis of IVL is usually deferred. IVL has been confused with other possible conditions including vasculitis, dementia, or infarction, occult neoplasm, and infection. When the lungs are involved, patients experience shortness of breath, hypoxemia, and, rarely, pulmonary hypertension, and the disease may simulate various lung diseases, particularly diffuse interstitial lung disease or a subacute or chronic infectious condition. Moreover, due to the rarity of this condition, ready diagnosis of the disease is difficult, and lung lesions in patients with IVL are often detected at autopsy.
To date, there have been several reports about the radiologic findings of lung IVLs. Although the main computed tomographic (CT) finding of lung IVLs is diffuse ground-glass opacity (GGO), the disease also may demonstrate subpleural patchy areas of consolidation and reticulonodular lesions. These CT manifestations of IVL are nonspecific and can be seen in patients with diverse diseases, which may cause delayed diagnosis of this rapidly progressive and diffuse vascular tumorous condition.
Consequently, chest physicians and radiologists should recognize this unusual vascular lymphoma as a possibility in the differential diagnosis of diffuse lung diseases.
- References
- 1. Pulmonary Intravascular Lymphomatosis: Clinical, CT, and PET Findings, Correlation of CT and Pathologic Results, and Survival Outcome. Min Jae Cha, Kyung Soo Lee, Hye Sun Hwang, Tae Jung Kim, Tae Sung Kim, Byung-Tae Kim, Young-Hyeh Ko, and Young Mog Shim. Radiology 2016 280:2, 602-610
- Keywords
- Lung, Neoplasm_Malignant,