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Correspondence
Incidence and prognostic significance of hypercalcaemia in B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
  1. G Majumdar
  1. Doncaster Royal Infirmary, Thorne Road, Doncaster DN2 5LT, UK; gautam.majumdar@dbh.nhs.uk

    https://doi.org/10.1136/jcp.55.8.637-a

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      Hypercalcaemia is considered to be rare in B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (B-NHL).1 In this letter I report eight cases with this complication among 112 patients (7.1%) diagnosed with B-NHL over a period of five years. The diagnosis of B-NHL was established by morphology and immunohistochemistry of biopsy specimens, and staging was done by computed tomography scan of the chest and abdomen, together with bone marrow aspirate and trephine biopsy. There were 70 patients with high grade B-NHL, 52 of whom had advanced disease (stage III/IV). The remaining 42 had low grade B-NHL.

      Five patients with high grade B-NHL presented with hypercalcaemia and another patient developed hypercalcaemia at the time of relapse. One patient with low grade B-NHL developed hypercalcaemia at the time of transformation to Richter's syndrome. One other patient with low grade B-NHL developed hypercalcaemia at the time of relapse. All patients had advanced disease. Table 1 shows the details of the patients.

      Median survival of the five patients with high grade B-NHL presenting with hypercalcaemia was 10 months. This was significantly shorter than the 47 other patients with advanced disease (21 months; p < 0.05) who did not present with …

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