A varied presentation of dermal adnexal tumours: An institutional study

Abstract

Introduction: Adnexal skin tumours are a heterogeneous group of uncommon tumours usually misdiagnosed clinically due to a huge variety of types and their variants. Histopathology usually helps in establishing the diagnosis. The study was conducted to analyse the morphological, clinical and histological features of adnexal tumours (ATs) of the skin at our centre over a period of 5 years. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study was conducted over a period of 5 years (January 2016–January 2021), comprising 85 ATs of skin diagnosed in the Department of Pathology, Sri Devaraj URS Medical College, Kolar, Karnataka, India. All the consecutively reported AT cases were reviewed and reclassified as ATs arising from sebaceous glands, hair follicles or sweat glands. The concordance of clinical and histopathological diagnosis was also assessed. Results: Most of the ATs were benign, with the head and neck being the most common location (61.15%), followed by the trunk (22.3%). Nearly 39% of the tumours were of hair follicle differentiation, 30% sweat gland differentiation and sebaceous gland tumours accounted for 31%. The most common varieties of tumours encountered in the present study included sebaceous cysts and pilomatricoma. The concordance between the clinical and histopathological diagnosis was found to be 50% approximately. Conclusion: Histopathology is the gold standard for diagnosing ATs as they are often misdiagnosed clinically.

Keywords

• adnexal tumour
• apocrine
• appendageal unit
• eccrine
• pilosebaceous unit