[Non-Hodgkin's malignant lymphoma. Retrospective study of 64 cases classified according to Kiel's and Rappaport's nomenclature].

64 cases of non-Hodgkin malignant lymphomas were the object of a retrospective study: these 64 cases were considered in terms of Kiel's and Rappaport's classifications. The stimultaneous study using the two classifications showed that entities defined in one of them do not correspond to entities defined in the other one. --This study allows us to define: 1) in Kiel's classification, a groupe of lymphomas of favorable prognosis, by opposition with a group of lymphomas of poor progonosis, all stages included; 2) in Rappaport's classification, a group of nodular lymphomas of favorable prognosis, for which the actuarial survival curves, all stages included, seem to accord with the anatomico-clinical data thus far published. Nevertheless, while nodular lymphomas can be identified as lymphomas of favorable prognosis, it does not seem possible to isolate, in Rappaport's classification, a group of lymphomas of poor prognosis by opposition with the favorable prognosis group. This study confirms that, to the morphological entity of the malignant centroblastic centrocytic follicular lymphoma, there corresponds a lymphoma of favorable prognosis whose median is 72 months, all stages included, for an average age of 57.5 years (this median is more than 180 months in the clinically localized stages). This morphological entity of Kiel covers 76 per cent of Rappaport's malignant nodular lymphomas. Nevertheless, 24 per cent of these same malignant nodular lymphomas are considered to be lymphomas of poor prognosis by Kiel and seem to appear as such in our study.