Lingual thrombosis presenting as tongue carcinoma

Abstract

We report a case of a 57-year old man who was admitted to our department with a necrotic ulcer of the tongue. Carcinoma of the tongue was initially suspected and incisional biopsies were performed along with Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the head and neck and a Computerized Tomography of the head, neck and thorax. The images were normal and the biopsies surprisingly did not show malignancy but venous thrombosis. The patient experienced complete remission without treatment. When re-examining the biopsies the pathologist was unable to rule out vasculitis as a possible cause, because the specimen lacked the appropriate sized vessels for diagnostics. We would like to emphasize that vasculitis should always be considered as a differential diagnosis, when biopsies turn out non-malignant in a patient with a necrotic ulcer of the tongue.