Case report
Rational Management of Macroglossia Due to Acquired Systemic Amyloidosis: Does Surgery Play a Role?

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Report of a Case

A 57-year-old woman was referred to the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, School of Medicine, University of Valencia (Valencia, Spain), complaining of a 6-month history of a progressively enlarged tongue, sialorrhea, and dysphagia to solids. Practically concurring with the onset of these symptoms, she had begun to notice an increasing submental swelling. Her medical history was significant for penicillin allergy, hypothyroidism under hormone replacement therapy, and endometrioid

Discussion

Acquired systemic light-chain amyloidosis, the most frequent type of clinical amyloid disease in the developed world, has previously been referred to as primary amyloidosis. In our opinion, this term is misleading and should definitely be abandoned, because AL amyloidosis is typically secondary to an underlying plasma cell dyscrasia such as multiple myeloma. In fact, some investigators regard macroglossia as a paraneoplastic manifestation of the causal disorder and claim that, if a patient with

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