Previous studies found that BCL-2 expression is almost completely restricted to ALK- S-ALCL and is correlated with a poor outcome [13,14], however, in our study, BCL-2 expression did not have a significant influence on long-term survival, although the expression of BCL-2 was more frequently found in ALK- patients than in ALK+ S-ALCL patients. Here, ALK is linked to anaplastic large cell lymphoma.