[Classification of malignant lymphomas. Current situation]

The World Health Organization (WHO) is planning an update of the WHO classification of malignant lymphomas.

To present new findings concerning the diagnostics and subclassification of malignant lymphomas.

A selective literature search ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ) was carried out and combined with the practical experiences of the authors in clinicopathological diagnostics.

In recent years an increasing number of early lesions of malignant lymphomas have been described but the potential malignancy of these lesions is at least for some entities still uncertain. Newly defined entities have been described within the group of T-cell lymphomas and prognostic subgroups have been identified in the heterogeneous group of diffuse large B-cell lymphomas. Detection of mutations facilitates the differential diagnostics of morphologically similar diseases and can be an important component of the diagnostics.

Recent scientific insights are being included more and more into the diagnostics of lymphomas. The update of the WHO classification is a consequence of these developments.