PRIMARY LARYNGEAL LYMPHOMA

Primary laryngeal lymphoma is a very rare entity, with fewer than 50 c ases reported in the English literature in the past 60 years. Close sc rutiny of some of these case reports reveals that the larynx was not a lways the only site of involvement, thereby diminishing the total numb er of patients with primary laryngeal lymphoma to fewer than 35. The a uthors report a series of six patients, who were seen and evaluated at the Mayo Clinic between 1952 and 1995, with stage IAE non-Hodgkin's l ymphoma of the larynx. Three patients had large-cell lymphomas accordi ng to the REAL (Revised European-American Lymphoid) classification. Th e other three had a small lymphocytic lymphoma, follicular small cleav ed lymphoma, and follicular mixed lymphoma. All patients received radi ation therapy alone as initial therapy for their disease and all patie nts had a complete remission to initial therapy. Four patients subsequ ently relapsed and the histology at relapse was the same as the initia l histology in all four patients. Five patients have died, three of ly mphoma, with a median survival of 67 months (range, 40 to 228 months). In view of the heterogeneity of histologies in this group of lymphoma s, the variability in duration of response, and the significant number of patients who died of their disease, it is more likely that primary laryngeal lymphoma is an unusual presentation of non-Hodgkin's lympho ma than a separate disease entity. Despite the small number of patient s in this study, the data would suggest that patients are best treated according to the histology of the lymphoma, rather than the limited s tage and location of the disease.