Hodgkin's Disease and Kaposi's Sarcoma: Report of a Case

The coexistence of Hodgkin's disease and Kaposi's sarcoma is uncommon. Of the 1,200 reported cases of Kaposi's sarcoma, nine have had the coexistence of Hodgkin's disease. The incidence of Hodgkin's disease in patients with Kaposi's sarcoma is therefore slightly less than 1%. This is considerably greater than the incidence of Hodgkin's disease in the general population, which is 0.002%.1 1 The first case report of a coincident Kaposi's sarcoma and Hodgkin's disease was that of Osborne et al in 1947. 2 The diagnosis of both diseases was substantiated by histologic studies. In 1949, Greenstein and Consten reported a patient who showed evidence of both diseases at postmortem examination. 3 In 1950, McCarthy and Pack's large series of cases of Kaposi's sarcoma included a patient who also had Hodgkin's disease. 4 Epstein, in 1957, presented the autopsy findings of a patient who had both diseases at the time of death. 5