Anaplastic large cell Ki-1 lymphoma of bone

Anaplastic large cell Ki-1 lymphoma is an uncommon type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that rarely presents primarily in the bone. Three such cases are reported. All patients were young and had bone pain; one had paraparesis as a complication of collapse of the thoracic vertebral body. The involvement was either monostotic or polyostotic. Radiologically, the lesions were lytic and had ill-defined borders. Histologically, the large neoplastic cells had pleomorphic bizarre nuclei, prominent nucleoli, abundant deeply amphophilic cytoplasm, and paranuclear pale hof. They were admixed with variable numbers of inflammatory cells. One case each was of T-cell, B-cell, and non-T non-B lineage. All three cases showed excellent responses to chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy. Recognizing the lymphomatous nature of this highly pleomorphic tumor is important because of its potential curability with appropriate chemotherapy.