Follicular Lymphoma Presenting Solely as Chronic Follicular Conjunctivitis

Abstract

Purpose: Conjunctival lymphoma rarely can have atypical clinical presentations. The authors report a case of conjunctival follicular lymphoma that presented solely as bilateral chronic follicular conjunctivitis. This case underscores that the pathological characteristics of conjunctival follicles can only be determined by histopathologic examination.Methods: The patient underwent conjunctival scraping and biopsy after clinical history and examination failed to reveal the etiology of his chronic, symptomatic, follicular conjunctivitis.

Updates in Ocular Surface Tumor Diagnostics

“…In general, malignant lesions, when compared to benign lesions, tend to occur in older patients, in the fornix, and tend to be larger and bilateral 61 ; however, none of these characteristics definitively characterize a mass as malignant. As mentioned above, CL can present as a chronic follicular conjunctivitis, an entity that has many etiologies, most of which are also benign 60 . For a lesion suspicious for CL, the gold standard of diagnosis is a conjunctival biopsy, which is then sent for both histology and flow cytometry and gene rearrangement.…”