Oral angiolymphoid hyperplasia with eosinophilia.

Angiolymphoid hyperplasia with eosinophilia (ALHE) is an unusual and controversial lesion that occurs primarily in the head and neck area; oral involvement is rare. A case involving the labial mucosa, in which immunoglobulin deposits were found in association with a damaged centrally located artery, is described. The clinical and pathologic concepts presented in the literature are discussed. Suggestions that these lesions should be reclassified as epithelioid or histiocytoid hemangiomas may not apply to all of the cases that are acceptable as ALHE by current criteria. Different entities, which include vascular neoplasms, Kimura's disease, and possibly other reactive conditions, may be encompassed in the Western literature as ALHE. Involvement of a small artery and occasionally a vein, often with evidence of vascular damage, was reported in 24% of the cases of ALHE that were reviewed. Single nonrecurrent lesions were seldom found in association with blood eosinophilia, although in the absence of eosinophilia, single and multiple or current lesions occurred in 60% and 40% of the cases, respectively.