Subject(s)
Breast Neoplasms , Skin Neoplasms , Humans , Female , Breast Neoplasms/surgery , Breast , Microscopy, Confocal , Skin Neoplasms/surgeryABSTRACT
Medullary carcinoma of the thyroid gland accounts for only 5-10% of thyroid carcinomas. Also, metastases to the skin of malignant tumors are infrequently (2-9% of patients). In the case herein reported in a 64-year old woman, a metastatic nodule on the scalp was the presenting clinical manifestation of a medullary thyroid carcinoma. A comprehensive review of the literature was conducted for similar cases using PubMed. Only 18 cases of cutaneous metastases of medullary thyroid carcinoma have been previously reported in the literature, but skin lesions were the presenting complaint of the thyroid neoplasm in only three.
Subject(s)
Carcinoma, Medullary/pathology , Head and Neck Neoplasms/secondary , Scalp/pathology , Skin Neoplasms/secondary , Thyroid Neoplasms/pathology , Female , Humans , Middle AgedABSTRACT
Reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) allows the evaluation with superb accuracy of some skin tumors before, during, and after treatment. In clinical trials RCM has been shown to provide useful information for evaluation of efficacy of topical or systemic medication. With the recent introduction of handheld RCM a fast examination of the tumor can be done in minutes. In patients treated with surgery RCM plays a unique role to precisely map margins of the tumor in the skin surface and for the detection of subclinical recurrences. This article reviews the use of RCM in the research of different skin cancer tumor treatments.
