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Baumann I, Führer M, Behrendt S, Campr V, Csomor J, Furlan I, de Haas V, Kerndrup G, Leguit R J, De Paepe P, Noellke P, Niemeyer C & Schwarz S 
(2012) Histopathology 61, 10–17 Morphological differentiation of severe aplastic anaemia from hypocellular refractory cytopenia of childhood: reproducibility of histopathological diagnostic criteria Aims:  To evaluate the reproducibility and reliability of the histomorphological criteria differentiating severe aplastic anaemia (SAA) and hypoplastic refractory cytopenia of childhood (RCC), the most frequently acquired hypocellular bone marrow conditions of childhood. Methods and results:  We performed a double‐blind interobserver study of 100 different cases of SAA and RCC among seven haematopathologists of the European Working Group of MDS in Childhood (EWOG‐MDS) and the German SAA study. Cases with foci of typical myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) morphology, such as patchy erythropoiesis with defective maturation, in an otherwise highly hypocellular or adipocytic bone marrow were classified as having RCC. Bone marrow samples without a patchy distribution, few scattered myeloid cells or haematopoietic aplasia were diagnosed as SAA. In only four of 100 cases did the reference pathologists not reach agreement regarding classification as SAA or RCC. The kappa index was 0.79. Conclusions:  Our results show that the vast majority of SAA and RCC cases can be reliably differentiated by morphological means alone. A clear differentiation between SAA and RCC at presentation is mandatory for optimizing therapy strategies, and might be responsible for the fact that, in the German childhood SAA study, the probability of developing clonal disease after immunosuppressive therapy has dropped to 3%.

The spectrum of the clinical manifestation and the course of folliculotropic mycosis fungoides are broad and differ from classic mycosis fungoides. Folliculotropic neoplastic T-cell proliferation is associated with activation of inflammatory reactive T- and B-lymphoid cells, mesenchymal cells and changes in the hair follicle.

Invasive mycoses are pre-eminent causes of morbidity and mortality in the allogeneic stem cell transplant setting. In spite of novel diagnostic modalities, the timely and specific identification of invasive mycoses still remains challenging. We analyzed the case history of 97 consecutive patients receiving 103 allogeneic stem cell transplants between January 2003 and October 2006 performed by a single team at 2 transplant centers in Budapest, Hungary. All patients with febrile neutropenia not responding to broad-spectrum antibacterial therapy received amphotericin B deoxycholate empirically. In cases of proven or probable invasive aspergillosis, intravenous voriconazole was instituted. Patients who failed to improve on initial therapy were treated with an antifungal combination, while responders were switched to oral voriconazole. A total of 38 patients died following allografting. Both centers had an autopsy rate of 100% due to central health care regulations. An infectious cause of death could be identified in 15 cases, invasive fungal disease being the most prevalent and accounting for 10 fatalities. Six patients died of invasive aspergillosis, while invasive candidiasis and mucormycosis led to a fatal outcome in 2 cases each. Despite the regular use of galactomannan antigen detections and imaging, an ante mortem diagnosis of proven/probable invasive fungal disease could only be established in 4 of 10 autopsy-verified cases (aspergillosis: 3, candidiasis: 1, mucormycosis: 0). In the remaining 6 patients, deep mycoses were missed clinically and were revealed only by postmortem histology. Present diagnostic and therapeutic strategies still seem to be suboptimal for the management of invasive fungal diseases in the high-risk allogeneic stem cell transplant population.