Indolent course of the cutaneous Hodgkin's disease

Skin involvement in Hodgkin's disease (HD) is most often a secondary phenomenon representing a rare, late manifestation of dissemination of the disease heralding a grave prognosis. Primary cutaneous HD is very unusual, being reported in 0.5-3.4% of all patients. Based on the introduction of immunohistochemistry for better detection and classification, we report a case with an ostensibly isolated primary cutaneous HD who developed multiple cutaneous lesions 5 years before enlargement of the lymph node involved during relapse. Pathohistology of skin lesions and the involved lymph node indeed showed the same subtype (mixed cellularity) of HD characterized by the presence of CD15+, CD30+, CD45RO- cell-surface markers and by the presence of Epstein-Barr virus+ marker-analyzed immunohistochemistry.