[Combining clinical and pathological features to explore the diagnostic challenges of marginal zone lymphoma]

The diagnosis of marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) still relies on morphology, immunohistochemistry, and flow cytometry. Pathologists and clinicians have some difficulties in the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of MZL. The key difficulty lies in its diverse clinicopathological manifestations and the lack of characteristic biomarkers or molecular biological features. Combined with clinical and pathological features, this article focuses on some difficulties in the related differential diagnosis, such as the differentiation between extranodal MZL (EMZL) of mucosa associated lymphoid tissues and reactive lesions, between spleen MZL (SMZL) and other splenic lymphomas, as well as MZL with plasmacytic differentiation from lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma (LPL) and myeloma, which aims to provide insights for both clinicians and pathologists in the differential diagnosis of MZL.