[Primary pulmonary lymphoma]

The authors report 2 cases of primary pulmonary lymphoma. The first case was a 65 year old woman with a diagnosis of lymphocytic lymphoma confirmed by surgical biopsy, after being suspected on the basis of bronchoscopic biopsies and bronchiolo-alveolar aspiration. Twenty one months after the beginning of treatment with chemotherapy and six months after this treatment was completed, the patient was in complete remission. The second patient was a 52 year old man who underwent left inferior lobectomy for a lympho-plasmacytic lymphoma, which was only diagnosed definitively on the operative specimen. The authors discuss the clinical and radiological features and the histological and immunological criteria of primary pulmonary lymphomas (PPL). There are a number of related diseases with varying degrees of malignancy: interstitial lymphocytic pneumonitis (ILP), pseudo-lymphoma, which corresponds to a localised form of ILP, lymphomatoid granulomatosis (LYG) and pulmonary lymphoma, which usually has a lymphocytic or lympho-plasmocytic cell type.