[Specific skin infiltration in Hodgkin's disease].

A 60 year old man consults the dermatologist because of a bean sized centrally ulcerated painless tumor in the skin of his left axilla. The axillary lymph nodes proximal to the skin tumor are firm and enlarged. The skin biopsy reveals a dense mixed infiltrate composed of lymphocytes, histiocytes, plasma cells and granulocytes and there are multiple neoplastic mononuclear and some multinuclear giant cells, resembling Hodgkin- and Reed-Sternberg-cells. Thus the diagnosis of Hodgkin's disease was considered on the grounds of the skin biopsy. Immunohistologically the atypical giant cells express the CD-30 (Ki-1)-antigen. Histology of the subsequently excised lymph nodes resembled the changes in the skin and showed classical Hodgkin's disease of mixed cellularity.