Journal of Hepatology, Gallbladder and Biliary Disease Research

Literature search revealed lymphoma of the liver in various countries as regards single or more cases. These data are compared with those obtained from patients of the Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria. As in different parts of the world, males were affected more often than females.

Keywords: Liver; lymphoma; sex; developing community.

Internet search regarding lymphoma of the liver revealed single cases from countries as variegated as India, Uruguay, Greece, and USA [1- 4]. Therefore, since the Birmingham (UK) group emphasized that the establishment of a histopathology data pool improves epidemiological analysis, this paper is based on such a pool used by the Igbo ethnic group [5, 6]. It was pioneered personally from 1970. So far, regarding the lymphoma broadly, other articles pertained to the breast, the forensic presentation and the palate [7-9]. Meanwhile, there have been other coauthored papers on the small bowel, bilateral breast and vagina [10-12].

The Government of the Eastern Region of Nigeria established a Regional Reference Laboratory at Enugu, the capital city. As the pioneer pathologist, I insisted on biopsy specimens being submitted in formol-saline with epidemiological data. The cases which I diagnosed as lymphoma of the liver are the subject of this paper. They are presented in tabular form.

Comparison with the world pattern is indicated. Surprisingly, this was not clear in the monograph on malignant lymphoma. Thus, the liver was not indexed [13].

In a series of 3 patients from Brazil, all were males in the fifth decade of life [14]. The local series is comparable in the sense that males preponderated and the mean age was 42 years. Similarly, middle aged males were most often affected in Hong Kong [15]. Indeed, considering the worldwide epidemiology of adult lymphoma, Boffetta found its occurrence to be higher in men than in women [16].

Most patients had abdominal pain with hepatomegaly in a USA paper [17]. The Igbo patients showed this pattern.

Another USA paper suggested that liver lymphomas exhibit two types, namely, nodular and diffuse [18]. It was not possible to ascertain this segregation with the local biopsy specimens.

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