Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Feb 7, 2015; 21(5): 1675-1679
Published online Feb 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i5.1675
Castleman’s disease of the spleen
Hee-Jeong Lee, Ho-Jong Jeon, Sang-Gon Park, Chi-Young Park
Hee-Jeong Lee, Sang-Gon Park, Chi-Young Park, Department of Internal Medicine, hemato-oncology, Chosun University Hospital, 501-717 Gwangju, South Korea
Ho-Jong Jeon, Department of Pathology, Chosun University Hospital, 501-717 Gwangju, South Korea
Author contributions: Lee HJ analyzed the data; Jeon HJ confirmed pathology; Lee HJ wrote the paper; Park SG and Park CY proofread and revised the manuscript; all authors approved the version to be published.
Supported by Research fund from Chosun University, 2013.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Chi-Young Park, MD, PhD, Department of Internal Medicine, hemato-oncology, Chosun University Hospital, 365 Pilmun-daero, Dong-gu, 501-717 Gwangju, South Korea. pcy@Chosun.ac.kr
Telephone: +82-62-2203279 Fax: +82-62-2349653
Received: June 18, 2014
Peer-review started: June 19, 2014
First decision: July 9, 2014
Revised: August 12, 2014
Accepted: September 19, 2014
Article in press: September 19, 2014
Published online: February 7, 2015
Processing time: 236 Days and 5.7 Hours
Abstract

Castleman’s disease (CD) is a rare lymphoproliferative disorder of unknown etiology. Clinically, it occurs as a localized (unicentric) disease or as a systemic (multicentric) disease. Unicentric Castleman’s disease (UCD) presents as a solitary mass and primarily affects the mediastinal, retroperitoneal, and cervical lymph nodes. In contrast to multicentric CD, which involves peripheral lymphadenopathy and numerous systemic symptoms, UCD is not typically associated with generalized symptoms. Three main distinct histologic variants are recognized: hyaline-vascular type, plasma cell type, and mixed type. Extranodal CD is rare. Specifically, UCD exclusively in the spleen is extremely rare, with only 2 cases described in the literature to date. Here, we describe an asymptomatic 75-year-old man with a 5.7 cm × 4.5 cm sized heterogenous enhanced mass located in the spleen. He underwent surgical resection for diagnosis and treatment. A pathologic examination indicated the hyaline-vascular type of CD. In this patient, the preoperative diagnosis was difficult to determine, and therefore, invasive procedures were required.

Keywords: Castleman’s disease; Hyaline-vascular type; Spleen

Core tip: Unicentric Castleman’s disease (CD) of spleen is extremely rare, with only less than 5 cases described in the literature. We experienced a case of CD isolated spleen.