Nasopharyngeal malignant lymphoma: clinico-pathologic studies

Forty-eight cases of malignant lymphoma in the nasopharyngeal regions collected from the file of the Department of Pathology, Tohoku University Hospital, over 10 years period were reviewed from the clinico-pathologic standpoint. Males outnumbered females in a ratio of 3.3 to 1. The age distribution ranged from 13 to 83 years, and the mean age was 51 years. A nasopharyngeal malignant lymphoma without lymph node involvement seemed to be a highly curable tumor by irradiation, showing 10 out of 12 survived 5 years or more. On the contrary, almost all the patients with an involvement of the cervical lymph nodes revealed early recurrences and short survivals. No cases of well-differentiated lymphocytic lymphoma or Hodgkin's disease were found in the series of the present study.