A Case of Castleman's Disease in Childhood

ABSTRACT

Castleman's disease(CD) is rare in childhood. It is defined as a localized nodal hyperplasia in mediastinum or cervical area. It is also called angiofollicular lymph node hyperplasia, lymph nodal hamartoma, giant lymph node hyperplasia. It was first described in 1956 by Castleman et al. as a lesion of mediastinal mass. The etiology of CD is not clear. The histologic classification of CD is hyaline vascular and plasma cell type. The hyaline-vascular type is more frequent, and characterized by small hyaline-folliclees and interfollicular capillary proliferation. The plasme cell type is characterized by the large follicles with intervening sheets of plasma cells. The clinical classification of CD is solitary and multicentric type. The solitary type is usually asymptomatic but, the multicentric type is usually combined systemic manifestations, such as fever, anemia, hyperglobulinemia. Complete surgical resection of involved lymph nodes is both diagnostic and therapeutic. The prognosis of solitary type is good, in a general way. We experienced CD cases in five-year-old girl, who had a 4x3 cm solid mass in postrior triangle of neck, right. The mass was removed completely and confirmed Castleman's disease microscopically. The histopathologic finding was a proliferation of germinal centers with hyaline thickening of the wall and the interfollicular stroma showed hyperplastic vessels admixed with lymphocytes, plasma cells and eosinophils. She discharged after six days of operation and her prognosis was good.