Malignant Lymphoma with Initial Symptoms in the Mandibular Region

Primary intraosseous lymphoma is rare and there are few case reports manifesting with a mass in the mandible. Thus, we retrospectively reviewed and analyzed the clinical characteristics, treatment, and outcome of extranodal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) with initial mandibular symptoms in our department. At initial treatment of dental clinics, dentists had diagnosed as dental or gingival diseases and had performed dental treatment. Neurological disorder to involvement of the inferior alveolar nerve was present in 80.0% of our cases. On dental or panoramic radiography a specific radiolucent lesion in the mandible was not detected, except for dental lesions. On CT, NHL of the mandible region has no widening and no clear destruction but a slit-like the cortex bone destruction pattern with keeping in shape of the mandibular body (62.5% of CT-examined cases), and extraosseous soft tissue mass are clearer on MRI (100.0% of MRI-examined cases). Histopathologically, 80.0% of our cases were diagnosed as diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL). One case as B-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma and one case as B-cell lymphoma unclassifiable with features intermediate between DLBCL and Burkitt lymphoma were Stage IV (Ann Arbor staging system) and had poor prognosis. The disease-specific survival rate was 77.8% at 5 years. If unexplained non-specific symptoms such as swelling of the jaw, pain, neurological disorder of the inferior alveolar nerve, tooth mobility are observed, oral surgeons and dentists should not perform dental treatments. CT and MRI show disease specific appearance to be able to give a definitive diasnosis as NHL. PET/CT is useful for scaninng of whole body. A deep bone biopsy is preferred for suspected malignant lymphoma. Corresponding author.