Multicentric Castleman disease detected during the evaluation of tongue cancer: A case report.

Castleman disease is a non-neoplastic lymphoproliferative disorder that encompasses a variety of disease types. The current study reports a case of multicentric Castleman disease that was incidentally detected during the workup for tongue cancer. A 73-year-old male visited the Tochigi Medical Center (Utsunomiya, Japan) in May 2022, with the main complaint of pain on the left side of his tongue. At his initial visit, a 25×15 mm exophytic tumor with a slightly ambiguous border was observed on the left side of the patient's tongue. Positron emission tomography/computed tomography revealed numerous abnormal accumulations on the left side of his tongue as well as in the cervical and systemic lymph nodes. A tongue biopsy revealed a diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma. Meanwhile, as a result of fine needle aspiration from the cervical lymph nodes and a biopsy of the inguinal lymph nodes, lymph node lesions were diagnosed to be a plasma cell variant of Castleman disease. Subsequently, a partial glossectomy was performed under general anesthesia, with the final histopathological diagnosis of the lingual lesions being squamous cell carcinoma as well. The progress of the patient was monitored since the symptoms of Castleman disease were mild and asymptomatic. At 30 months postoperatively, none of the lesions had progressed, and the postoperative course remained uneventful.