Rhino-Orbita-Maxillary Mucormycosis After Liver Transplantation: A Case Report.

Mucormycosis is a rare lethal complication of organ transplantation that progresses rapidly, and the prognosis is dismal if diagnosed late. We present a surviving liver transplant recipient in whom severe rhino-orbita-maxillary mucormycosis developed 1 month after liver transplantation. Prompt diagnosis with tissue biopsy, local control of the underlying condition with aggressive surgical debridement, and appropriate administration of systemic antifungal therapies are essential to improve prognosis and survival.

The significance of pre-epiglottic space invasion in supraglottic laryngeal carcinomas.

It is widely accepted that tumoral invasion of the pre-epiglottic space (PES) has a significant prognostic importance in supraglottic laryngeal carcinomas. The lymphatics of the supraglottic larynx drain to cervical lymph nodes via the PES. Since the supraglottic larynx is an embryological unit that contains the PES, malignant lesions of this region must be resected with en bloc surgery, including the PES. Tumors with PES invasion are already considered to be T3 in TNM staging. The purpose of this study was to review the clinical experience we have had with these tumors at Ankara University. The study comprised 150 patients with squamous cell carcinomas of the supraglottic larynx treated with either partial or total laryngectomies. Findings suggested that PES invasion occurred at early stages of supraglottic tumor progression. Suprahyoid epiglottic lesions behaved less aggressively than tumors originating from other supraglottic subsites and did not invade the PES until advanced stages. PES invasion was not considered to be a significant prognostic factor because the majority of the supraglottic lesions studied demonstrated PES invasion regardless of cervical lymph node metastases. Analysis of oncological and functional results revealed that en bloc resection of the supraglottis with the PES was facilitated by preservation of the hyoid bone.

Overexpression of p53 in laryngeal carcinoma: clinicopathological implications.

The aims of this study were to determine the incidence of p53 overexpression in squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx and to establish whether or not this bore any relationship to survival, location, stage, histological differentiation, nuclear atypia, mitotic activity, stromal desmoplasia, tumor-associated tissue eosinophilia, or stromal lymphoplasmocytic infiltration. Paraffin blocks from 51 cases of laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma with a minimum follow-up period of 36 months were recut and stained immunohistologically with anti-p53 antibody using the streptavidin-biotin technique. Results were compared with clinicopathological features with Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. Sixty-three percent of tumors showed positive staining for p53, and in addition, 15% of the sections with adjacent normal or dysplastic mucosa showed positive staining. No relationship between p53 staining and prognosis or any other one of the aforementioned clinicopathological parameters was observed. Although p53 overexpression is a common feature in laryngeal carcinomas, it does not seem to have an impact on prognosis and it does not bear any relationship to the aforementioned clinicopathological parameters.