An enlarging pacemaker pocket: A case report of a plasmablastic lymphoma arising as a primary tumor around a cardiac pacemaker and systematic literature review of various malignancies arising at the pacemaker pocket.

To date, there have been limited reports of oncogenesis occurring within pacemaker pockets. We report the case of a 100-year-old male who presented to the emergency department complaining of expansion of his pacemaker pocket over the period of 8 days. Dissection of the pacemaker pocket and pathological analysis of tissue samples revealed plasmablastic lymphoma, a subset of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, commonly seen in immunocompromised elderly patients. This is the first known reported case of plasmablastic lymphoma occurring within a pacemaker pocket. <Learning objective: We describe the first case of a plasmablastic lymphoma arising as a primary tumor around a pacemaker site. A thorough literature review of primary tumors arising around pacemakers is provided. As the life expectancy of our population increases, the amount of time that pacemakers are in place increases as well. Therefore, we discuss several mechanisms that may have led to the oncogenicty of pacemakers, as well as the role of titanium in carcinogenesis.>.