Revised European-American Lymphoma Classification

The recently proposed Revised European-American Lymphoma Classification represents a serious attempt to overcome the controversies that have divided both pathologists and clinicians over the past three decades. It was formulated by 19 experienced hematopathologists, who agreed on a list of clinicopathologic entities, all well known from the literature and daily practice. Compared with previous schemes, the Revised European-American Lymphoma Classification offers the following advantages: 1) it incorporates all nodal and extranodal lymphoid tumors, including Hodgkin's disease; 2) it is histogenetically updated by recognizing new categories (such as the mantle cell category) and grouping tumors that need further validation to be considered as separate entities (eg, diffuse large B-cell lymphomas); 3) it avoids any morphologic grading, the clinical course of lymphomas being influenced by factors other than histology (tumor burden, cell kinetics, apoptotic rate, and so forth) and 4) it includes all molecular data (phenotype, genotype, cytogenetics, and so forth), which can assist in the diagnosis.