[Scleronodular retrosternal Hodgkin's disease with cervical protrusion]

The case of a retrosternal localization of Hodgkin disease is a very infrequent one, and its presentation as an inflammatory tumor is exceptional indeed. This case report of a young woman affected by a cervical tumour projecting in front of the sternal bone, both with fever and tenderness, gave a mistaken address toward a diagnosis of suppurative thyroiditis. But the rare evenience of this thyroidal affection made the diagnosis very improbable and the patient was treated by partial exeresis of the cervical mass and drainage of its apparently suppurative content. At the pathologic study the mass revealed its true nature, also if very unusual: the appearance of the specimen, studied also with immuno-chemical methods, revealed its true nature of scleronodular Hodgkin disease probably born on a thymic cyst remnant. Also the possibility of a suppurative evolution from a pyriform laryngeal sinus is discussed, but simply on a differential diagnostic basis for the original hypothesis of an inflammatory mass. The correct diagnosis instead offered the patient the possibility of the correct chemo-radio-therapeutic treatment and of final cure.