Clinicopathological Study of Skin Adnexal Tumors with Special Emphasis on the Line of Differentiation

Abstract

Background: Skin is a complex organ composed of epidermis, dermis and skin adnexa producing multitude of tumors. The skin adnexal neoplasms are classified into sub-groups, depending on their differentiation towards hair follicles, sebaceous, apocrine and eccrine glands. Clinically adnexal neoplasm presents as asymptomatic papules or nodules, having non-specific morphological appearance and therefore histopathology is the gold standard for their confirmatory diagnosis. The aim is to assess clinico-histopathological characteristic features of the skin lesions, subtype and to pick up certain subtle features that clinch the diagnosis towards their line of differentiation. Methods: The study has been conducted in the Department of Pathology, for a period of one year. The total numbers of cases with histopathological diagnosis of skin adnexal lesions are 105. Ethical clearance for the same has been obtained by the Head of Institution. Skin biopsy specimen are received and processed in the histokinette; paraffin embedded blocks made and stained with Hematoxylin & Eosin stain. Special stains when required have been used. Descriptive statistics have been used in analysis of the results. Result: The total number of cases with histopathological diagnosis of skin adnexal lesions is 105. Among them 99/105 cases (94.3%) are benign and malignant counterparts comprised of 6/105 cases (5.7%).Overall lesions with hair follicle differentiation comprised of 73.3% (77/105), followed by sebaceous differentiation of 15.3% (16/105) and eccrine differentiation of 11.4 % (12/105). Conclusion: This study emphasized that histopathological examination, plays an essential role in studying the skin adnexal tumors, owing to its indistinctive clinical presentation. Keywords: Adnexal, Eccrine, Skin, Tumor, Sebaceous, Apocrine