Oral medicine case book 49: plasmablastic lymphoma

Abstract

A 25-year-old male patient presented at the Oral Medicine Clinic with a painful bleeding lesion on the palate causing him discomfort during speech, mastication, and sleep. The lesion started approximately five months earlier as a small growth that gradually increased in size. The patient was rather vague about his medical history and habits but he did reveal that he smoked two cigarettes per day as well as using cocaine, a habit for which he was receiving therapy, for drug-induced hallucinations, at a local psychiatric hospital. He was not aware of any other medical conditions or allergies. The extraoral examination revealed nothing of note, however, on intraoral examination a large and firm pedunculated exophytic soft tissue mass was seen on the hard palate. It covered a large portion of the hard palate extending from the back of the upper incisors posteriorly onto the anterior part of the soft palate and into the right vestibule. It extended laterally to the gingival margins of all the teeth in the first quadrant, resulting in an appearance of gingival hyperplasia. The growth had an erythematous appearance with surface patches of necrosis and other areas that easily bled on touch (Figure 1).