Trichilemmal carcinoma

Abstract

Trichilemmal carcinoma is an infrequent malignant neoplasia that arises in the skin adnexa. It usually appears around the fifth decade of life on sun-exposed areas and its origin is barely known. Due to its rare prevalence it is usually mistaken for other dermal tumors, its clinical presentation does not favor a differential diagnosis and generally this is made by exclusion. This study presents the case of a 47-year-old man with photosensitive type I skin who came to the doctor’s office with a painful nodular lesion at the end of the right eyebrow, which was surgically removed with ample surgical margins. The paraffin biopsy revealed a trichilemmal carcinoma totally resected. The literature related to this entity of difficult diagnosis and unusual presentation in our setting was reviewed.

Keywords

• skin neoplasms
• hair follicle
• biopsy