Malignant lymphoma of the liver. Report of five cases and review of the literature.

Primary hepatic lymphoma is a rare disease. We report five cases here and summarize clinical and pathologic features of our own and reported cases from Western countries and Japan. The total number of cases was 68. The age of patients ranged from 7 to 87 years (median 55) with a male-to-female ratio of 3.1:1. Chronic hepatitis or cirrhosis before onset of hepatic lymphoma was noted in 44% of Japanese cases and 9.6% of Western cases. Macroscopically, the liver was occupied by solitary mass (60%), multiple masses (35%), or a diffuse lesion without nodule formation (5%). Histologically all cases were non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with the diffuse large cell type being most common. Three cases (4.4%) were follicular lymphoma. Immunohistochemically about 80% of the cases were B-cell type. Follow-up study showed that hepatic lymphoma had a relatively favorable prognosis when early detection of the disease was possible.