Lymphangitis carcinomatosa-diagnostic use of immunohistological staining in atypical cases

ABSTRACT

Lymphangitis carcinomatosa [LC] usually presents a typical clinical and radiological picture. However, diagnostic difficulty arises when the clinical presentation is complicated by other features or the radiological picture is atypical. This paper describes 5 atypical cases where diagnosis was established by transbronchial lung biopsy. In 2 of these cases immunohistological staining was used to determine the epithelial nature of the cancer cells or to differentiate between blood vessel capillaries and lymphatics. We believe this to be the first reported use of this staining method in LC