SARS-CoV-2 Infection during Pregnancy and Histological Alterations in the Placenta.

(1) Background: Despite the high number of cases of COVID-19 during pregnancy, SARS-CoV-2 congenital infection is rare. The role of the placenta as a barrier preventing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from the mother to the fetus is still being studied. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on placental tissue. (2) Methods: This was a transversal monocentric observational study. In the study, we included pregnant women with COVID-19 who delivered at "Sfântul Pantelimon" Clinical Emergency Hospital between 1 April 2020 and 30 March 2022. Histological analyses, both macroscopic and microscopic, were performed for placentas that came from these cases. (3) Results: To date, a characteristic placental lesion has not been clearly demonstrated, but most findings include features of maternal and fetal vascular malperfusion, which probably reflect the reduction in placental blood flow due to low oxygen level from the hypoxic respiratory disease and underlying hypercoagulable state induced by the COVID-19 infection. (4) Conclusions: The histopathological aspects found in placentas that came from COVID-19-positive pregnant women are common for many other diseases, but when they are found together, they are highly suggestive for viral infectious involvement of the placenta.

Primary bone leiomyosarcoma of distal femur: case report and literature review.

We present the case of a 58-year-old patient presented with a spontaneous right supracondylar fracture. The initial bone biopsy, highlighted the defining histopathological (HP) elements for a leiomyosarcoma (LMS), initially considered a metastasis. The complex imaging examinations did not reveal another tumor, so the final diagnosis was primary bone LMS. Final treatment was a wide tumor resection and reconstruction with a knee tumor prosthesis, preceded and followed by three cytostatic cycles (Doxorubicin 75 mg∕m²). The HP examination has confirmed the previous diagnosis. The key microscopic features for the diagnosis of bone LMS was: malignant mesenchymal proliferation composed of intersecting fascicles of cells with eosinophilic, fibrillary cytoplasm and pleomorphic, elongated, blunt-ended, cigar-shaped nuclei of variable sizes; variable mitotic count; presence of tumor necrosis and stroma with changes that include hyalinization, myxoid change, with absence of chondroid or osteoid matrix; diffuse positivity for smooth muscle immunohistochemical markers: smooth muscle actin, desmin, h-caldesmon. At 12 months after the tumor resection, the patient is in good condition without any sign of local recurrence or metastatic disease. LMS represents a type of soft tissue sarcoma (STS), a variant of the spindle cell sarcomas, accounting for about 7% to 10% of all STS. Bone LMS can be primary or secondary; the primary variant is very rare, representing a very small percentage (around 0.7%) of all primary malignant bone tumors, according to the literature data. Very few cases are presented in the literature; the management of this kind of tumor is controversial, especially regarding the chemo- and radiotherapy.

Review of the biotechnologies and tests used for precancerous cervical lesions diagnosis.

This paper draws on the author's extensive experience in the clinical research focused on the implementation of the new biotechnologies able to identify precancerous cervical lesions and is intended to be a systematic approach to new achievements. The goal of this review is to provide updated information concerning the significance of each biotechnology used in clinical medicine to screen women for cervical cancer or to allow a pertinent discrimination between spontaneous remission lesions and progressive lesions. The data is arranged according to the most widely used biotechnologies and the worldwide recommendations of specialized guidelines.

Synchronous bilateral primary ovarian carcinoma - case presentation.

Bilateral synchronous primary ovarian carcinoma, histopathologically identical or different is a rare entity encountered in clinical practice. We present the case of a 38-year-old patient who is admitted with the presence of a massive pelvic abdominal tumor formation of 45÷35÷25 cm occupying the lower pelvic and upper abdominal floor, reaching halfway distance between the umbilicus and sternum and lateral bilaterally in the two abdominal flanks until iliac wing. The mixed transabdominal÷transvaginal ultrasound and computed tomography (CT), establish the diagnosis of bilateral ovarian tumor. The CA-125 level is 1822 IU÷mL. The exploratory laparotomy identifies two distinct bilateral ovarian tumors, ascites liquid and pelvic and lumbo-aortic lymphadenopathy, thus the surgery involves hysterectomy with bilateral ovariectomy, pelvic and paraaortic lymphadenectomy and omentectomy. Histopathological and immunohistochemistry (IHC) diagnosis highlights a well-differentiated serous carcinoma on the left ovary and right ovary. The six-month check after surgery as well as the one-year check showed the efficiency of postsurgery chemotherapy and did not signal the presence of relapses. The particularity of this case lies in the presence of bilateral synchronous primary ovarian carcinoma, histopathologically and IHC indicated serous carcinoma present with a difficult differential diagnosis including clear cell carcinoma at a young patient.

Epithelioid trophoblastic tumor: a case report and literature review.

Epithelioid trophoblastic tumor (ETT) is a very rare case of malignant trophoblastic tumor, which can occur particularly during the fertile age of women with a long history of abortion and delivery. ETT originates from the intermediate trophoblastic cells of chorion laeve. The main features of this tumor include lack of vessels within the tumor, nuclear hyperchromasia and pleomorphism and a large zone of necrosis and hyalinization. The clinical features of ETT are specific to each case and often consist of vaginal bleeding or amenorrhea in the absence of other complains. The beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (ß-hCG) serum level cannot be an absolute criterion useful in defining diagnosis. The right diagnosis can only be established by a histopathological examination of the tissue picked-up via intrauterine curettage. This paper describes the case of a 35-year-old woman who required gynecological investigation for amenorrhea. The diagnosis established by biopsic curettage and the clinical evolution have influenced the physician's decision to perform hysterectomy. The only method to differentiate between the microscopic diagnosis of ETT and choriocarcinoma was the immunohistochemical staining of trophoblastic cells for cytokeratin AE1÷AE3, p63, Ki67. Despite the diagnosis of malignity, this tumor does not usually require a recommendation for chemotherapy and does not seem to have a bad prognostic. However, these data do not rule out that clinical behavior is sometimes difficult to predict. We analyzed the clinical and histology criteria in line with the data published in literature.

A histopathological and immunohistochemical approach of surgical emergencies of GIST. An interdisciplinary study.

The tailored approach to gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) has led to better prognosis for these types of tumors. Also, finding out GIST's pathology has led to a better understanding of oncogenesis and cancer therapy in general. The rapid expansion of molecular and pathological knowledge of GISTs has given this disease a promising future. We analyze 30 cases of GISTs operated on in our clinic with confirmed diagnosis by immunohistochemistry. Most of the cases were acute cases that required urgent surgical therapy. An extended analysis of these cases is performed in order to underline their special features. We recorded 17 GISTs of the stomach, 12 GISTs of the small bowel and one esophageal GIST. Of the 30 cases, 15 cases required urgent surgery presenting with GI bleeding or shock following intraperitoneal rupture and bleeding or intestinal obstruction. Of the 15 cases that required urgent surgery 12 cases presented with serosal involvement. Twenty-four cases presented spindle cell histology, four cases were epithelioid and two cases presented mixed cellularity. Although acute presentation of GISTs is not the rule, 15 of 30 of our cases required immediate surgery and a high proportion of them (12/15) presented with serosal involvement. Serosal involvement may warrant the need for a macroscopic classification of GISTs and correlation to therapy. While overall mortality was not high in our series, morbidity is affected by acute presentation, though not specifically pertaining to the diagnosis of GIST. Acute presentations were more frequent, in our series, for small bowel GISTs, compared to gastric GISTs. Serosal involvement was more frequent in the group with acute presentation compared with non-acute GISTs and was present at the most cases of small bowel GISTs with acute onset. The Ki-67 index showed no difference between acute and non-acute onset of GISTs.

The triage of low-grade cytological abnormalities by the immunocytological expression of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p16INK4a versus Human Papillomavirus test: a real possibility to predict cervical intraepithelial neoplasia CIN2 or CIN2+.

OBJECTIVE: Assessing the hypothesis that p16(INK4a) immunocytochemistry (ICC) has better relevance than Human Papillomavirus (HPV) testing at detecting high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (HGCIN) upon histopathological diagnosis in women with abnormal cytologies such atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASC-US) or low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A retrospective study of 63 selected cases (22 with ASC-US and 41 with LSIL) was performed at "St. Pantelimon" Clinical Hospital, Bucharest, Romania, using p16(INK4a) ICC and Linear Array HPV Genotyping Test. All cases have been followed-up by colposcopy and biopsies. The sensitivity and specificity of p16(INK4a) and HPV were analyzed by chi-squared test. RESULTS: LSIL cytologies were more likely to be p16(INK4a) positive than those with ASC-US: OR=3.1, 95% CI (1.06-9.11). The processed data show that in women with LSIL the sensitivity of p16(INK4a) is 37.5% higher than that of high-risk(hr)-HPV (p=0.0050), whereas in ASC-US it is 44.5% higher (p=0.0577). In ASC-US, p16(INK4a) has a higher specificity (84.62%) than hr-HPV (53.85%); for LSIL cytologies, this difference is less steep: 58.82% for p16(INK4a) as compared to 47.06% for HPV. CONCLUSIONS: The p16(INK4a) is significantly more sensitive than hr-HPV in both low-grade abnormal cytologies and has higher specificity than HPV testing to detect HGCIN, mainly in women with ASC-US cytologies. Only women with ASC-US and LSIL cytologies who test positive for p16(INK4a) should be directed to colposcopy and/or biopsy. p16(INK4a) is a suitable immunocytochemical marker which increases the accuracy of diagnosis at women with low-grade cytologic abnormality.

P53, p63 and Ki-67 assessment in HPV-induced cervical neoplasia.

Carcinoma of the uterine cervix is the most frequent malignancy in women, with an incidence of approximately 456.000 cases per year, leading to 200.000 deaths per year. Twenty-six archived formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples of squamous cell carcinoma, selected from 30 Papanicolaou-positive smears, have been analyzed using standard HE stain and the IHC indirect tristadial ABC peroxidase method for four antibodies: p53, p63, Ki-67, HPV. Statistical analysis has been done using the Student t-test, one-group two tails, "paired two samples for mean" variant. Two thirds of the cases were medium and poor differentiated carcinomas. The expression pattern of the proliferation and prognostic factors was biologically correlated with the histopathological type and HPV-infection. Two statistically significant correlations were found between p63 and Ki-67 and between p63 and p53 (p<0.001). The significant increase of the expression of the analyzed immunomarkers was observed in most of the cases with late stage of cervical neoplasm. P63, followed by Ki-67, showed better correlation with cancer progression than p53. This observation could be used in clinical practice with the purpose of identifying those patients requiring more aggressive treatment.

Cystic optic nerve sheath meningioma.

A 58-year-old woman with a 35-year history of left proptosis underwent neuroimaging that revealed a large cystic lesion. Surgery revealed an optic nerve sheath meningioma associated with cyst formation. The cyst was part of the tumor, a phenomenon that is well described in intracranial meningiomas but not in optic nerve sheath meningiomas.

Clinical controversy in orbitary cholesteatoma.

Cholesterol granulomas are tumor-like lesions very rarely encountered in the orbital, frontal sinus, and maxillary sinus sites but with higher frequency in the middle-ear and petrous apex. Theoretically, cholesterol granulomas develop as a reaction to localized hemorrhages, often occurring in bony sites with no blood and blood products drainage. We present 5 cases with exophthalmoses, namely, 3 cases with granuloma and 2 cases with cholesteatoma, all being characterized by the presence of cholesterol spikes at the histologic examination. Henderson (Orbital tumors. 3rd ed. New York: Raven Press; 1994) reports cholesterol spikes in medical literature as structures with different histologic names as hematic cyst, intraorbital hematoma, subperiostal hemorrhages, chocolate cyst, and xanthomatosis reactive lesions of bone. In fact, cholesterol granuloma is the term for the pocket of hematogenous debris found in the frontal bone at surgery. We try to review the spectrum of clinical-pathological and radiographic features that characterize cholesterol granuloma but with the same surgical way management.

Vascular tumors in the orbit--capillary and cavernous hemangiomas.

Vascular tumors in the orbit result from new formation of vessels, proliferation of tissue components of the vessel wall, and hyperplasia of cellular elements ordinarily concerned with the genesis of vascular tissue. These vasculogenic lesions constitute the largest group of primary orbital tumors; we present the capillary hemangioma and the cavernous hemangioma.

Fine-needle sampling in malignant phyllodes tumors: clinicopathologic study of 22 cases seen at the Institut Curie.

The preoperative cytological diagnosis of malignant phyllodes tumor (MPT) is challenging due to the heterogeneity of its clinical, radiological, and morphological presentation. To better define the cytopathological characteristics of MPT, we reviewed 22 examples seen at the Institut Curie. The original cytologic diagnosis was benign breast tumor in four cases (18.2%), suspicious in seven cases (31.8%) (low-grade phyllodes tumor in six cases needing histological evaluation, suspicious of sarcoma in one case), and malignant in 11 cases (50%). Smears were composed of different proportions of clusters of epithelial cells (68.2%), phyllodes fragments (31.8%), spindle cells within stromal tissue (31.8%), isolated spindle-shaped or round cells (45.5%), and bipolar naked nuclei (22.7%). Giant cells and mitotic figures were also occasionally seen. The cytological findings on smears were correlated with histopathological observations. One of the difficulties to reach an accurate cytological diagnosis for MPT is the frequent overwhelming of clearly malignant sarcomatous cell by the presence of largely predominant clusters of epithelial cell.

[Intracranial and intraorbital meningioma ]. / Meningioame intraorbitare si intracraniene--tema de granita neurooftalmologica.

UNLABELLED: AIM OF THE ARTICLE: To discuss the simultaneous presence of intraorbitar and intracranian meningiomas, the origin and the link between these tumors. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We show 3 cases with intracranian and intraorbitar meningiomas. RESULTS: Therapeutically attitude and debates about anatomopathological results. CONCLUSIONS: Difficulty in determine the intracranian or intraorbitar origin of meningiomas.