Castleman's Disease of the Neck

Abstract

Castleman's disease is an uncommon benign disease of unknown etiology that induces reactive lymph node hyperplasia. There are 2 histologic subtypes of Castleman's disease: hyaline vascular type and plasma cell type. Tissue biopsy is necessary for a definitive diagnosis. Castleman's disease of the neck occurs rarely. On reviewing the literature, most Castleman's disease of the neck presented with a single mass. We report here an 80-year-old man with 2 neck masses of 1 year's duration. A 4-cm firm movable mass in the left submandibular area and another 2-cm firm movable mass in the left level IV area were noted. The patient was diagnosed with Castleman's disease of the neck after resection of 1 of the masses. There was no evidence of progression or recurrence of the disease after 21 months of follow-up. We suggest that this was a rare case of multicentric cervical Castleman's disease.