No abstract

Carcinosarcoma and sarcomatoid carcinoma of the bladder are highly aggressive malignancies with a similar outcome regardless of histological findings and treatment. Pathological stage is the best predictor of survival.

No abstract

Abstract:The classification of kidney tumors in adults expands rapidly with new categories recently incorporated. This will result in the modification of the current 2004 World Health Organization (WHO) classification of the adult renal epithelial neoplasms. Emphasis should be placed in defining risk groups categorized as malignant or benign tumors, including a category of tumors with low malignant potential to accommodate recently recognized categories with extremely good prognosis after surgery. Unusual tumors such as familial renal cell carcinoma (RCC), translocation RCC, renal cell carcinoma after neuroblastoma, tubular mucinous and spindle cell carcinoma, and mixed epithelial and stromal tumors are also presented. A number of recently described entities and morphologic variants of classical categories deserve recognition since they can be important in differential diagnosis. This review emphasizes clinical, pathological and genetic features defining renal epithelial tumors in adults.

Germ cell tumours (GCTs) are a heterogeneous group of neoplasms, which develop in the gonads as well as in extragonadal sites, that share morphological patterns and an overall good prognosis, owing to their responsiveness to current surgical, chemotherapeutic, and radiotherapeutic measures. GCTs demonstrate extremely interesting biological features because of their close relationships with normal embryonal development as demonstrated by the pluripotentiality of some undifferentiated GCT variants. The similarities between GCTs and normal germ cell development have made it possible to identify possible pathogenetic pathways in neoplastic transformation and progression of GCTs. Genotypic and immunophenotypic profiles of these tumours are also useful in establishing and narrowing the differential diagnosis in cases of suspected GCTs. Recently, OCT4 (also known as OCT3 or POU5F1), a transcription factor that has been recognized as fundamental in the maintenance of pluripotency in embryonic stem cells and primordial germ cells, has been proposed as a useful marker for GCTs that exhibit features of pluripotentiality, specifically seminoma/dysgerminoma/germinoma and embryonal carcinoma. The development of commercially available OCT4-specific antibodies suitable for immunohistochemistry on paraffin-embedded specimens has generated increasing numbers of reports of OCT4 expression in a wide variety of gonadal and extragonadal GCTs. OCT4 immunostaining has been shown to be a sensitive and specific marker for seminomatous/(dys)germinomatous tumours and in embryonal carcinoma variants of non-seminomatous GCTs, whether in primary gonadal or extragonadal sites or in metastatic lesions. Therefore, OCT4 immunohistochemistry is an additional helpful marker both in the differential diagnosis of specific histological subtypes of GCTs and in establishing a germ cell origin for some metastatic tumours of uncertain primary. OCT4 expression has also been reported in pre-invasive conditions such as intratubular germ cell neoplasia, unclassified (IGCNU) and the germ cell component of gonadoblastoma. Additionally, OCT4 immunostaining shows promise as a useful tool in managing patients known to be at high risk for the development of invasive GCTs.

The key points of the latest World Health Organization (WHO) classification of non-invasive urothelial tumors are the following: the description of the categories has been expanded to improve their recognition; a tumor with particularly good prognosis (papillary urothelial neoplasm of low malignant potential) no longer carries the label of 'cancer'; it avoids the use of ambiguous grading such as grade 1/2 or 2/3 (as done in the 1973 WHO classification); the group of noninvasive high-grade carcinoma is large enough to virtually contain all those tumors having biological properties similar to those seen in invasive urothelial carcinoma, and a similarly high level of genetic instability. This scheme is meant to replace the 1973 WHO classification, but the use of both the 1973 and the latest WHO classifications is recommended until the latter is sufficiently validated.

No abstract

No abstract