Étude historique des lymphomes et de leurs classifications

The history of lymphomas and their classifications begins in the 19th century with the first description of diseases by pioneers of the anatomo-clinical method : Hodgkin, Virchow, Ewing. During the 20th century until our days, classifications of lymphoma became more and more refined and consensual, as morphological criteria will be completed by a colossal multidisciplinary work including clinical, immunophenotypical, cytogenetic, genotypical, bio-computing and bio-statistical data. Evolution of science and medicine, that becomes “evidence-based”, leads to a better comprehension of the disease, and thus to a better management of patients. Successive classifications of lymphoma continually evolving reflect the perpetual evolution of the scientific and technical knowledge in haematology, immunology, genetics and microscopic imagery over time. Whereas the first taxonomy of leukemia and lymphoma published in 1903 held in four small word groups, the last 2008 WHO classification is a “blue book” of 439 pages, including up to 2510 references. This work includes a huge set of multi-factorial data, susceptible to end the elaboration of new targeted therapies. By overflying chronologically the main classifications of lymphomas, we try to extract for every period one dominating paradigm which serves as main thread to the thought of time and allows to build a hierarchical model of knowledge which grows rich and strengthens as the science and medicine progress.