[Morphological study of 4 cases of T lymphoma]

Modern physiopathological studies of the lymphoid system have enabled accurate immunological identification of the different B lymphopathies. Concurrently, the categorization of T proliferations is evolving. In addition to the morphologically well known categories of T lymphomas, three different histological entities are at present termed T lymphomas by anglo-saxon authors: lymphoma with pleiomorphic cytology, or large cell lymphoma, whose identification seems to be the most difficult; Pinkus lymphoma, with subcutaneous clinical localizations which differ from the initial sites of lymphomas, composed of lymphoid cells whose morphology is very characteristic; Lennert lymphoma, whose precise nature is still under debate, but that has been immunologically identified as a T neoplasm by some American authors. We report four observations that exemplify the complex identification of these lymphomas. One case is a Lennert lymphoma which developed into T immunoblastic lymphoma rising the problem of the relationships between these two diseases. The link between these diverse histological pictures is the T immunological identification of the proliferation for which the routine use of monoclonal antibodies should prove helpful.