Possibilities of clinical and radiological differential diagnosis of non-lymphogranulomatous lymphomas and mediastinal lymphogranulomatosis

Despite a significant number of works devoted to malignant lymphomas, early differential diagnosis of these tumors and malignant neoplasms of the mediastinum in general, as well as differentiation of variants in the group of malignant lymphomas itself remain undeveloped. This is especially true for isolated lesions of the mediastinum. Radiological picture of mediastinum and lung lesions in malignant lymphomas is extremely diverse. It depends on the combination of lesions of different groups of mediastinal lymph nodes, their size, localization, as well as on the stage of the disease. Is it possible to distinguish in this polymorphic picture the features peculiar only to lymphogranulematosis, non-lymphogranulematous lymphomas (lymphosarcomas and reticulosarcomas are combined by this term according to WHO classification of 1976) or these diseases cannot be distinguished radiologically from each other? Some authors answer that there is no dependence of the radiological picture on the histological variant of malignant lymphomas, while others point to some differences. Therefore, we would like to dwell on the clinical and radiological data allowing differential diagnosis of non-lymphogranulomatous lymphomas and lymphogranulematosis.