Fine needle aspiration cytology of dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans arising in a burn scar.

Tumours developing after a protracted period of time in burn scars are a notable complication with carcinomas forming a major share. The occurrence of burn scar sarcomas is scarce with dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP) being an uncommon entity having only three prior reported cases. The authors report a case of a 32-year-old male patient with a 5 year prior history of thermal burn who presented with an expanding painless swelling for 2 years in the right flank region, diagnosed as DFSP on fine needle aspiration cytology and subsequently confirmed on histopathology.

Concomitant disseminated tuberculosis and lepromatous leprosy in a previously healthy male.

Tuberculosis (TB) and leprosy are two chronic mycobacterial infections caused by intracellular Gram-positive aerobic acid-fast bacilli. Both have highly variable presentations depending on immunological milieu of the host and account for significant disease morbidity. The burden of these age-old infections of humanity still remains high in India. Regardless of the same geographical endemicity of the two, coinfections are sparsely reported. Indeed, studies have revealed an antagonism between them. Of the few coinfections reported in the past, majority were diagnosed over a temporal sequence, with one occurring after the other, and most of these were localized forms of TB associated with leprosy. Only a single case of disseminated TB and lepromatous leprosy has been reported in the medical literature till date. Here, we report another rare case of disseminated TB and lepromatous leprosy that ultimately proved fatal for the patient. The diagnosis of the two diseases was made simultaneously which is again infrequent in the reported literature.

Isolation and morphology of circulating tumor cells by cell block technique in breast cancer.

BACKGROUND: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cells present in the blood stream that are antigenically or genetically similar to a specific tumor type and are markers of tumor diagnosis, prognosis, residual disease and metastasis. The ever-increasing burden of breast cancer globally warrants the incorporation of this all-inclusive marker in the diagnostic repertoire using the simplest of techniques. AIMS: To identify CTCs in peripheral blood by cell block (CB) technique in cases of breast cancer diagnosed on fine-needle aspiration (FNA) or core needle biopsy (CNB) and to correlate their presence with nodal metastasis. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This study was conducted in the Department of Pathology, at a tertiary care hospital. Peripheral blood samples from a total of 30 cases of primary breast carcinoma diagnosed on FNA or CNB without prior neoadjuvant chemotherapy were analyzed using the CB technique. RESULTS: The age ranged between 29-74 years with the most common presenting complaint being a palpable, single, unilateral breast lump. CTCs were detected in 2 (6.7%) cases with a <5 cell cluster with both the cases being grade I breast carcinomas and also displaying nodal metastasis.