[Malignant lymphoma and cytology].

Cytological diagnoses of lymph nodes in 300 cases by aspiration biopsies were compared with the final histological diagnoses. The rate of accurate cytological diagnoses were 73% of all 300 cases, and 64% of 100 cases of malignant lymphomas. The accuracy of cytological diagnosis of malignant lymphomas by the histologic types was the highest in diffuse lymphoma, relatively low in Hodgkin's disease and the lowest in follicular lymphoma. Imprints of lymph node biopsies from 20 cases of diffuse lymphoma, large cell type of the LSG classification were obtained at the time of diagnosis. By their differential cell counts the value of large lymphoid cells was 72 (33 to 98)%. In the patients with less than 75% of large lymphoid cells in imprints of lymph nodes seemed to tend to have disseminated disease at the time of diagnosis and leukemic manifestation at the last stage. Imprints of lymph node biopsies from 15 cases of diffuse lymphoma, pleomorphic type of the LSG classification at the time of diagnosis revealed large lymphoid cells of 41 (2-86)% and prolymphocytes of 41 (3-90)% by the differential cell counts of the imprints. Patients with more than 50% of large lymphoid cells were frequently suffered from fever and hepatosplenomegaly and had advanced stages at the time of diagnosis. They had poor responses to therapies resulted in unfavorable prognoses. Therefore, it was suspected that the cytological findings of lymph nodes in patients with malignant lymphomas of these types might be correlate to the clinical features and the prognosis.