A 33-year-old Malay lady presented to us with 1-month history of globus sensation in the throat. Clinically, she had a 3cmx2cmx1cm sessile soft mass arising from the right tongue base and was treated as hypertrophied lingual tonsil. Biopsy of the mass was done when the patient developed bleeding and was reported as diffuse non-Hodgkin's B-cell lymphoma. Globus sensation is a common complaint in the ORL clinic. It is important to be able to decide if further investigation is warranted to differentiate a malignant from a benign lesion as at times, a malignant lesion can masquerade as a harmless lesion.
Choristoma is a benign tumor where new bone formation occurs. It occurs exclusively in the flat bones of the skull and face. These are slow growing lesions that are usually completely asymptomatic and only present when there is a disruption in the function of the organ due to its large size as it grows. These choristomas can rarely occur in soft tissues especially in the head, eye, tongue, or extremities. Choristomas of the soft tissues are very rare. Only 61 cases of choristomas of the tongue have been reported in literature. Here we report a case of choristoma in the base of the tongue in a 25-year-old Malay female.
We present a case of a middle-aged woman with a mass in the posterior third of the tongue which was diagnosed as a tongue haemangioma. The tumour was successfully excised via a midline mandibular osteotomy and tongue splitting approach. The histopathology examination, however, revealed the 5x4 cms mass to be a lingual thyroid. The salient features of this unusual presentation of a thyroid enlargement will be discussed.
Comment in: Ng CS, Mohd MS. Lingual thyroid--a lesson to learn. Med J Malaysia. 2005
Mar;60(1):115
Lipoblastomas are benign tumours of immature fat cells presenting in infancy. A lipoblastoma within the airway lumen causing airway compromise is an extremely rare occurrence. We present a 6 hours of life girl who had airway compromise due to a lobulated mass at the base of the tongue. The mass was excised after emergency endotracheal intubation.
We encountered a patient with a tongue base lymphoma that we initially diagnosed as a lingual tonsil in view of its benign appearance. We established the correct diagnosis of Waldeyer ring lymphoma by histology. This case led us to conduct a study of all cases of Waldeyer ring lymphoma that had been treated at our center during a 10-year period. We retrospectively examined our case records and found 35 such cases. From this group, we excluded 5 cases because of incomplete data. Thus our final study group was made up of 30 patients-14 males and 16 females, aged 14 to 76 years (mean: 51.6; median 54). The primary presenting signs and symptoms were dysphagia (n = 17 [57%]), a neck mass (n = 7 [23%]), nasal symptoms (n = 5 [17%]), and pain (n = 1 [3%]). Only 4 patients (13%) had B symptoms. A total of 20 patients (67%) presented with tonsillar involvement, 8 (27%) with nasopharyngeal involvement, 1 (3%) with tongue base lymphoma, and 1 with anterior tongue involvement. Most patients (77%) presented at an early stage. Histologically, 25 patients (83%) had high-grade diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, 4 (13%) had T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma, and 1 (3%) had follicular lymphoma. Twenty-one patients (70%) were treated with chemotherapy, 4 (13%) received adjuvant chemotherapy with either radiotherapy or surgery, 3 (10%) resorted to other forms of treatment (primarily traditional remedies), and 2 (7%) declined treatment altogether. There were 14 patients (47%) alive at the end of the study period.