Aim: To review the oncological safety and aesthetic advantage of skin-sparing mastectomy (SSM) for invasive breast cancer (IBC) and ductal carcinoma in-situ (DCIS). Controversies including the impact of radiotherapy (RT) on immediate breast reconstruction (IBR), preservation of the nipple-areola complex (NAC) and the role of endoscopic mastectomy are also considered. Methods: Literature review ...

Metastasis is a frequent and lethal complication of cancer. Vascular endothelial growth factor-C (VEGF-C) is a recently described lymphangiogenic factor. Increased expression of VEGF-C in primary tumours correlates with dissemination of tumour cells to regional lymph nodes. However, a direct role for VEGF-C in tumour lymphangiogenesis and subsequent metastasis has yet to be demonstrated. Here w...

Solitary pleuro-pulmonary fibrous tumours are relatively uncommon neoplasms that are difficult to manage therapeutically and which, cytogenetically, have been poorly studied. The aim of the present work was to analyse the characteristics of a series of consecutive operated solitary pleural fibrous tumours in an attempt to discover a malignant pattern of evolution. This was a retrospective obser...

Solitary fibrous tumour is a soft tissue tumour composed of a subset of fibroblast-like cells and frequently needs immunohistochemical staining for final diagnosis. Epithelioid angiomyolipoma is a variant of angiomyolipoma but characterized by the absence of both adipocytes and abnormal blood vessels. We introduce a very rare case with the combination of these two tumours. A Japanese female pat...

Parotid gland carcinomas are rare. Among them, the epithelial-myoepithelial carcinoma (EMC) is extremely rarely diagnosed. This case report was based on a female with a history of 17 years of recurrent EMC of the parotid and evidence of distant metastasis over a period of 2 years. During debulking procedures of her extensive facial tumour, small tumour samples were transplanted to nude mice. Th...

Introduction. Paraneoplastic syndromes represent rare symptom complexes resulting from the ability of tumour cells to disrupt the homeostatic processes of various bodily systems. Here we present two cases to demonstrate how such tumours may evade detection even after extensive investigation and how even relatively benign tumours can produce severe neurological symptoms. Case 1. A 69-year-old fe...

Endolymphatic sac tumour (ELST) is infrequent, as emerges from small series reported in the literature. It is a slow-growing malignancy with local aggressiveness and a low risk of distant metastases. It is often misdiagnosed because of the late onset of symptoms and difficulty in obtaining a biopsy. Its frequency is higher in von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease (a genetic systemic syndrome involvin...

Low-grade oncocytic tumour (LOT) of the kidney is one emerging entities included in recently published Fifth Edition WHO classification Tumours.1 It shows overlapping morphological features with oncocytoma and chromophobe renal cell carcinoma but has unique KIT negative Keratin (KRT) 7 diffuse positive immunophenotype. Herein, we describe clinical, morphological, immunohistochemical findings tw...

Since the first clear demonstration of the existence of 'specific' antigens in experimental tumours (Gross, 1943; Foley, 1953), the extensive use of syngeneic animals has resulted in the identification of tumour-associated or characteristic macromolecules ('antigens') in association with spontaneously occurring or experimentally induced tumours (Old and Boyse, 1964; Baldwin, 1970; Stonehill and...