Background: Peripheral T and natural killer (NK) cell lymphomas represent a heterogeneous group of diseases with varied clinical features, prognosis and response to treatment.Content and comments: Flow cytometric immunophenotyping facilitated the diagnosis and classification for T/NK-cell neoplasms, and is very useful in the identification of therapeutic target markers. Clinical, immunophenotypic, histopathological, immunohistochemical, molecular and genetic methods must be correlated because none of them is strong enough alone for diagnosis.
Conclusion: The low incidence of NK/T-cell lymphoma poses real difficulties for a complete and correct assessment. The unspecified lymphomas represent a heterogeneous group, which requires additional studies to elucidate their biological and genetic bases, to separate them. The group of NK/T-cell lymphomas remains a challenge for researchers.
Keywords: NK/T-cell lymphoma; immunophenotype; prognosis.