Clinical and pathological features of Castleman's disease: experience at the Instituto Nacional de Cancerologia, Mexico City

Background: Castleman's disease ( CD) is a rare, poorly understood pathological entity. We report our experience with this clinicopathological entity. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed records of all patients with CD from 1996 to 2003. The disease was classified as unicentric if a solitary mass was present or multicentric if generalized lymphadenopathy was present. We further subdivided the disease into hyaline vascular (HV) and plasma cell ( PC) histological variants. Results: We found 11 patients with CD. Six patients had unicentric disease and five had multicentric disease. Median follow-up was 40 months. All patients with unicentric disease had the HV variant. Of the five patients with multicentric disease, four had the PC variant and one had the HV. Five patients with unicentric disease were treated surgically with complete resection, and only one patient was treated with chemotherapy. All remain alive without disease. Three patients with multicentric disease were treated with chemotherapy, and two patients received chemotherapy plus radiotherapy for residual disease. Two patients received second-line chemotherapy with a favorable outcome. Two patients with a comorbid condition had a poor outcome. Conclusions: Clinical characteristics, pathological features and treatment results are similar to that reported in other populations.