School of Medicine Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-13-2026
Abstract
Cutaneous Rosai-Dorfman disease (CRDD) is an uncommon non-Langerhans cell histiocytosis that may occur without systemic involvement and lacks specific clinical features. We report a 17-year-old female with a slowly enlarging chest lesion initially diagnosed as granulomatous dermatitis on a 4-mm punch biopsy. The lesion was treated as an inflammatory process without improvement. Complete excision revealed a multinodular dermal and subcutaneous infiltrate of large histiocytes demonstrating emperipolesis, confirming CRDD. Systemic evaluation was negative. The initial limited biopsy did not capture defining features, delaying diagnosis.
Persistent nodular lesions that fail to respond to therapy should prompt reconsideration and more representative tissue sampling. We have also tabulated selected reported cases, which further demonstrate that CRDD is frequently misdiagnosed in routine clinical practice due to nonspecific morphology and limited biopsy sampling.
Recommended Citation
Naidnur, S., Hedrick, J., Marupudi, S., Asbury, K., Maedo, K., Gammon, B., & Lin, R. (2026). Cutaneous Rosai-Dorfman Disease Misdiagnosed as Granulomatous Dermatitis: A Diagnostic Pitfall. Cureus, 18(3). https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.105191
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Cureus
DOI
10.7759/cureus.105191
Academic Level
medical student
Comments
© Copyright 2026 Naidnur et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 4.0., which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.