Small bowel lymphoma on small bowel endoscopic ultrasound: Case presentation and literature review

Diagnosing small bowel lymphoma is difficult, for which small bowel ultrasound endoscopy can be used effectively. This study summarizes the presentation of small bowel lymphoma on small bowel endoscopic ultrasound. We retrospectively analyzed the clinical features and imaging and endoscopic characteristics of five patients with small bowel lymphoma admitted to the Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University between April and October 2023. A literature review was conducted by searching the PubMed database, Web of Science, and Embase using “small bowel,” “small intestinal,” “endoscopic ultrasound,” and “lymphoma” as search terms with a date range from January 2000 to October 2023. We included five patients (four men and 1 woman) of 48–72 years of age. Enteroscopy indicated ulcerative small bowel lymphoma in two cases and mass-like small bowel lymphoma in three cases. Three cases were surgically treated, and two were treated using chemotherapy. We classified the small bowel endoscopic ultrasound presentation of small bowel lymphoma into two types based on enteroscopic presentation. (1) Limited or diffuse circumferential thickening of the bowel wall with homogeneous hypoechogenicity and loss of its normal layered organization and (2) Thickening of the entire bowel wall but without fusion, presenting as thickening of the muscularis propria.