[The clinical characteristics of hematosarcoma with primary skin involvement]. / Klinicheskie osobennosti gematosarkom s pervichnym porazheniem kozhi.

As many as 90 patients suffering from hematosarcomas associated with primary skin lesions were examined. This patients' group did not include patients with mycosis fungoides or with Sezary's syndrome. The clinical picture, ways and stages of the spreading of skin hematosarcomas were reviewed. Damage to the internal organs outstripped lymph nodes injuries in 1/3 of the patients. Half of the patients followed up until their death died at the height of acute leukemia. The survival appeared relatively high: the median period turned out to be 51 months, whereas 33% of the patients survived for 10 and more years. The survival was influenced by the sex and age of the patients as well as by the histological disease variant.

[The immunology of CD4-negative skin hematosarcomas]. / Immunologiia CD4-negativnykh kozhnykh gematosarkom.

A wide panel of monoclonal antibodies to hematopoietic cell differentiation antigens was applied to the study of CD4-negative skin hematosarcomas on cryostat secretions. The most frequent CD4-negative type was the B-cell one identified in 6 of 10 cases. In this type the use of monoclonal antibodies in addition to standard immunoglobulin markers seemed to be very important. T-cell type (CD3+ CD8+), histiocytic variant (CD11+Ia+), pseudolymphoma (polyclonal markers pattern), and Kaposi's sarcoma (hematopoietic cell negative antigen) were identified in 1 case each. The authors emphasize the importance of immunological studies of hematosarcomas because of the high frequency of the generalization of B-cell lymphomas; such studies may also help in the differential diagnosis between pseudolymphoma and hematosarcoma.

[Leukemization of hematosarcomas with primary involvement of the skin]. / Leikemizatsiia gematosarkom s pervichnym porazheniem kozhi.

Clinicomorphological investigation of 81 patients with different types of skin hematosarcomas was conducted. Stage IV of disease was diagnosed in 53 patients, leukemic involvement developed in 18 of them (34%). Leukemic bone involvement was shown to be the main cause of death in myelosarcomas and lymphoblastic lymphomas. There were no significant differences in the frequency of leukemic bone marrow involvement with relation to the site and nature of primary skin involvement. A clinical course of disease was determined by a skin tumor histological type. Some morphological features of bone marrow lymphoblasts in leukemic bone marrow involvement in skin hematosarcomas (irregular cell shape, a moderate nuclear-cytoplasmic ratio, azurophilic granulation, fine-grained patterns of PAS-positive substance) distinguished them from lymphoblasts in leukemic bone marrow involvement in hematosarcomas with a primary focus of another site.