Carcinoma of the tail of the pancreas presenting as acute abdomen.

CONTEXT: Large bowel obstruction with perforation is an anomalous presentation of pancreatic tail carcinoma. Pancreatic cancer is often difficult to diagnose clinically and is especially furtive when it is located in the tail of the pancreas. CASE REPORT: We describe a patient who presented with large bowel obstruction due to splenic flexure mass which proved to be due to pancreatic mucinous adenocarcinoma. CONCLUSIONS: Pancreatic adenocarcinoma can rarely have the same presentation as colon cancer, and should therefore be considered in the differential diagnosis of large bowel obstruction.

A rare urinary bladder tumour.

This case report describes a 54-year-old man who presented to his primary care physician with low back pain. During his workup, an incidental finding of a bladder mass was diagnosed. He underwent transurethral resection of the bladder tumour and the resulting pathology was consistent with extra nodal marginal zone lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT lymphoma). Presentation of MALT lymphoma in the urinary bladder is rare. This malignancy is more commonly found in the stomach. The prognosis for this rare tumour is excellent. Our patient showed no sign of recurrence with transurethral excision and radiation alone.

Fine-needle aspiration biopsy diagnosis of costal juxtacortical chondrosarcoma presenting as an abdominal mass.

The majority of chondroid tumors arising in the cortex of bone are benign in nature. Juxtacortical chondrosarcoma is a relatively uncommon variant of chondrosarcoma, which by definition, is a malignant cartilaginous tumor that occurs on the surface of bone and measures at least 5 cm. Although the diagnostic value of fine-needle aspiration biopsy is well established, its role in the diagnosis of soft tissue/bone tumors is still not uniformly accepted. Herein, we describe an interesting and controversial case of costal juxtacortical chondrosarcoma presenting as a large intraabdominal mass in a 52-year old female patient, which was diagnosed by fine-needle aspiration biopsy.

Synchronous presentation of breast carcinoma with plasmacytoid cytomorphology and multiple myeloma.

Plasmacytoid morphology is often encountered in both lobular and ductal carcinomas of the breast. The presentation of breast carcinoma in patients with a known history of lymphoma or multiple myeloma has been described in the literature. However, to the best of our knowledge, the synchronous presentation of breast carcinoma and multiple myeloma has not been reported. Here we report the first case of the simultaneous occurrence of breast carcinoma with plasmacytoid morphology and multiple myeloma in a 74-year-old patient, which presented challenges in making the diagnosis on fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) of the breast.