Why is mantle cell lymphoma easily misdiagnosed

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a type of lymphoma that was recognized relatively late by humans. It was not recognized by the scientific community until the early 1990s. Accurate diagnosis is the prerequisite for accurate treatment, but MCL may show an indolent course in the early stage, but then it will develop rapidly and become a very aggressive lymphoma with a median survival time of only 2 to 3 years. Therefore, it is very important to distinguish MCL from indolent lymphoproliferative diseases. However, in clinical work, MCL is often misdiagnosed and missed.

On the one hand, it is because the current knowledge of mantle cell lymphoma by domestic clinical workers began at the beginning of this century, so most pathologists/clinical physicians have little understanding of it or even do not know the disease. Clinical statistics show that 2/3 of MCL patients have been misdiagnosed as other lymphomas or benign diseases.

On the other hand, most MCL patients are already in the late stage, the so-called leukemia stage, with elevated white blood cells, similar to chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or other chronic lymphoproliferative diseases (CLPD). In addition, since the cell morphology of MCL is almost indistinguishable from CLPD, some medical institutions only diagnose diseases with lymphocytosis based on simple morphology, which is often easy to misdiagnose.