title: Atypical thoracic solitary plasmacytoma.
abstract: Plasmacytoma is a rare disease, which afflicts 2 to 3 people per every 100,000 of the general population. Solitary plasmacytoma accounts for 5% of the plasma cell neoplasm. Solitary plasmacytoma of the bone appears more vividly in the axial skeleton (25-60%), which has the red marrow and usually affects the thoracic vertebrae. We report a case of 54-year-old man who has a chest pain on the right side. After being treated for the muscle pain, his symptoms of pain were changed into weakness and allesthesia. We checked the MRI and found a mass lesion in the T5 vertebra, but there were no significant laboratory findings, in blood and urine samples. Finally, he got an operation due to the aggravation of the weakness. The result of biopsy indicated that it was a solitary plasmacytoma of the spine. After 5 months later, the weakness and allesthesia had disappeared.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, College of Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 130-702, Korea.
authors.forename: Dong Hwan
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Seung Don
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Yoo
authors.forename: Sung Min
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Sung Jig
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Im
authors.forename: Dong Whan
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Hong