Peripheral T-cell lymphoma presenting as a soft-tissue mass of the extremity

An 87-year-old man was found to have a lymphoma in the deep soft tissue of the right shoulder with concomitant central nervous system involvement. There was no evidence of cutaneous, peripheral lymph node, mediastinal, abdominal, or bone marrow involvement. Light microscopic, ultrastructural, and immunohistochemical evaluation characterized the neoplasm as a peripheral T-cell lymphoma. Lymphomas presenting in soft tissue are rare, and the few well-documented cases in the literature are of B-cell origin. We report a T-cell lymphoma presenting in the soft tissue of the extremity, and delineate its clinicopathologic features.