A two years study of histopathological spectrum of skin adnexal tumors in a tertiary care centre of Southern Assam, India

Abstract

Background: Skin adnexal tumors (SAT) encompass a wide spectrum of benign and malignant tumors that differentiate toward one or more adnexal structures found in normal skin. Overall incidence of SATs is low yet they can be challenging to diagnose. Our study aims at analysis of histopathological spectrum of various SATs according to age, sex and anatomic locations along with histopathological features.Methods: It was a retrospective cross-sectional study conducted over a period of 2 years from June 2017 to May 2019. All cases were retrieved from department registries and analyzed.Results: Out of the total 4013 biopsies, 25 cases were diagnosed as SATs comprising 44% of tumors with eccrine sweat gland differentiation followed by tumors showing hair follicle differentiation (32%), sebaceous differentiation (16%) and apocrine gland differentiation (8%). The age ranged from 4 years to 68 years and male: female ratio was 1:1.5. Most of the tumors were benign (84%) while only 16% were malignant. Pilomatricoma (19%) was the most common benign tumor while sebaceous carcinoma (75%) was the most common malignant tumor.Conclusions: Skin adnexal tumors are relatively rare neoplasm. Malignant cases are less common than benign ones. Histopathology is quite essential for diagnostic point of view.

A 5-year retrospective review of skin adnexal tumours received at a tertiary dermatopathology service: implications for linked genetic diagnoses

“…A further factor contributing to the differences in our data is likely to be our exclusion of sebaceous naevi, which are now recognized to be a birthmark arising as a result of genetic postzygotic mosaicism in HRAS and KRAS , 34 and sebaceous hyperplasia; both case types are no longer included in the 2018 WHO classification of skin tumours 1,5,10 . In contrast, the prior literature (Table S4) typically included these cases in their analyses, which contributed to 4–47·9% of their cases 3,9,12,13,16–20,22,23,25–29,33 . The largest of these studies had a cohort of 1014 patients, and a significant proportion of these patients had cases that were of sebaceous differentiation (53%, 536 of 1014), the majority of which were sebaceous naevi and sebaceous hyperplasia (413 and 73, respectively) 9 .…”

“…We found the most common benign SAT in adults to be hidrocystoma, followed by pilomatrixoma, trichilemmoma, cylindroma and spiradenoma. In the published literature, the most frequent tumours have been pilomatrixomas (11 of 24 studies), 12,14,17,19,21,[24][25][26][31][32][33] with hidradenomas (six of 24 studies) 13,15,20,24,27,30 also being frequently observed. We also analysed paediatric tumours (in patients aged ≤ 18 years), and found that they accounted for 10% of our caseload.…”

Clinicopathological Study of Skin Adnexal Tumors: A Single Institute Experience

“…These observations are in concordance with that of Suri et al ( 6), Kaur et al (7), and El Ochi et al (10). Other authors (5,(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16) have reported sweat gland tumors to be the most common, followed by hair follicle tumors. Interestingly, Kamyab Hesari et al (4) found sebaceous tumors to be the most frequent type, which is unlike of most published studies.…”

“…As for gender, many published papers have documented (4,7,9,11,12,15) that both sexes are roughly equally affected. Some authors have described a slightly higher preponderance of males (6,10,17), while others have reported a mild predominance of females (5,13,14,16). These discrepancies must have been related to disparate proportions of histologic types of tumors in the study cohorts.…”

“…This is accounted for by the fact that this body site is rich in pilosebaceous units and sweat glands, thereby providing a fertile environment for the development of ASTs. However, the proportional involvements of this area differ markedly (46% -88%) among analyses conducted in various countries (4)(5)(6)(7)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17).…”