Littoral cell angioma of the spleen: Cytological findings and review of the literature

• Main Authors: Mohammad H Anbardar, Perikala V Kumar, Hamid R Forootan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications 2017-01-01
• Series: Journal of Cytology
• Subjects: Cytology; littoral cell angioma; spleen
• Online Access: http://www.jcytol.org/article.asp?issn=0970-9371;year=2017;volume=34;issue=2;spage=121;epage=124;aulast=Anbardar

Littoral cell angioma (LCA) is a unique lesion of the spleen that arises from the cells lining the venous sinuses of the splenic red pulp and shows the features of combined endothelial and histiocytic differentiation. Several cases of LCA have been reported in the literature; however, the cytological findings have been described for only a few cases. We report the case of an 11-year-old boy with anemia, epigastric abdominal pain, and splenomegaly. The splenic lesions showed anastomosing vascular channels with cyst-like spaces filled by many sloughed endothelial cells, which were positive for CD68 and CD31 and negative for CD34. Scraping cytology revealed isolated and clusters of three-dimensional bland looking, epithelioid foamy tumoral cells with low nuclear cytoplasmic ratio, which mostly contained intracytoplasmic hemosiderin pigment. Although the fine needle aspiration cytology of splenic lesions is uncommon and LCA is a rare splenic lesion, it must be noted in the differential diagnosis of any splenic vascular neoplasm.