Intermittent fever and cough in a 56-year-old patient: Relapsing polychondritis and extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma

Relapsing polychondritis (RP) is a rare autoimmune disease in which recurrent and progressive chondritis occurs throughout the body. We report a case of a 56-year-old female subject presented as intermittent fever and cough, who was found obvious luminal stenosis and intense (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake in her larynx and trachea via bronchoscopy and FDG positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT). The auricular cartilage biopsy demonstrated chondritis. At first she was diagnosed as RP and treated by glucocorticoid and methotrexate, leading to completely response. Fever and cough recurred after 18 months, and FDG PET/CT were performed again and targeted a newfound nasopharyngeal lesion, where the biopsy proved to be an extranodal natural killer (NK)/T-cell lymphoma, nasal type.