Renal medullary carcinoma metastatic to the scalp.

A 40-year-old woman presented to the Brooke Army Medical Center Emergency Department complaining of 2 episodes of gross hematuria. Computed tomography and intravenous pyelogram revealed a right renal mass. A radical nephrectomy was performed with complete excision of the mass with negative margins on histological examination. The patient was diagnosed with renal medullary carcinoma, Fuhrman grade 4, based upon histological examination. A positron emission tomography scan revealed no other evidence of the disease. The pathologic stage was stage I renal medullary carcinoma. Four months after her nephrectomy, the patient developed a papule on her right frontal scalp. Initially thought to be a cyst, the papule increased in size over the course of 2 months and eventually ulcerated. At that time, she presented to the Wilford Hall Medical Center Dermatology Clinic with a 2.5-cm ulcerated tumor with pink rolled borders. A punch biopsy of the tumor revealed an infiltrating carcinoma with scattered glandular lumina and desmoplastic and mucinous stroma. The carcinoma was completely intradermal. Expert consultation confirmed the diagnosis of metastatic renal medullary carcinoma. Clear cell (conventional) and papillary renal cell carcinomas are known to metastasize to the skin, including the scalp. Renal medullary carcinoma commonly metastasizes to the regional lymph nodes, lung, liver, or adrenals. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a cutaneous metastasis of renal medullary carcinoma.

Primary cutaneous nodular amyloidosis: case report and review of the literature.

Primary cutaneous nodular amyloidosis (PCNA) is a rare form of primary cutaneous amyloidosis. It presents as waxy yellow-red nodules that are located preferentially on the lower extremities, face, scalp, and genitals. Recognition of this condition is of particular importance, as primary systemic amyloidosis can have a similar cutaneous presentation. We report a case of PCNA in a 52-year-old woman with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Sjögren syndrome (SS). We discuss the need to evaluate for systemic disease and provide a concise review of the literature focusing on clinical presentation, disease associations, and management.

Lichenoid paraneoplastic pemphigus in the absence of detectable antibodies.

Paraneoplastic pemphigus (PNP) has been described as an antibody-mediated mucocutaneous disease occurring almost exclusively in patients with lymphocytic neoplasms. We describe 4 patients with the clinical features of the lichenoid variant of PNP in the absence of detectable autoantibodies. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that the spectrum of PNP likely includes patients with disease predominantly or exclusively mediated by cytotoxic T cells rather than autoantibodies. The pathophysiology and range of PNP disease are likely more complex than was initially believed.

Risk assessment for benefits analysis: framework for analysis of a thyroid-disrupting chemical.

Benefit-cost analysis is of growing importance in developing policies to reduce exposures to environmental contaminants. To quantify health benefits of reduced exposures, economists generally rely on dose-response relationships estimated by risk assessors. Further, to be useful for benefits analysis, the endpoints that are quantified must be expressed as changes in incidence of illnesses or symptoms that are readily understood by and perceptible to the layperson. For most noncancer health effects and for nonlinear carcinogens, risk assessments generally do not provide the dose-response functions necessary for economic benefits analysis. This article presents the framework for a case study that addresses these issues through a combination of toxicology, epidemiology, statistics, and economics. The case study assesses a chemical that disrupts proper functioning of the thyroid gland, and considers the benefits of reducing exposures in terms of both noncancer health effects (hypothyroidism) and thyroid cancers. The effects are presumed to be due to a mode of action involving interference with thyroid-pituitary functioning that would lead to nonlinear dose response. The framework integrates data from animal testing, statistical modeling, human data from the medical and epidemiological literature, and economic methodologies and valuation studies. This interdisciplinary collaboration differs from the more typical approach in which risk assessments and economic analyses are prepared independently of one another. This framework illustrates particular approaches that may be useful for expanded quantification of adverse health effects, and demonstrates the potential of such interdisciplinary approaches. Detailed implementation of the case study framework will be presented in future publications.

Linking economics and risk assessment.

Benefit-cost analysis relies heavily upon risk assessment. The extent to which benefits can be quantitatively included in an economic analysis is frequently determined by risk assessment methods. Therefore, interdisciplinary collaboration between economists and experts in risk assessment-related disciplines is critical to further development of quantitative human health benefits analysis. To further lay the groundwork for such collaborations, this article reviews the economic foundations of benefit-cost analysis, identifies implications of incorporating this approach into risk assessment, and suggests future cooperation between economists and risk assessors.

An unusual case of calciphylaxis.

BACKGROUND: Cutaneous calciphylaxis is a rare disorder that occurs most frequently in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), those on hemodialysis, and renal transplant recipients. It is frequently associated with hyperparathyroidism and a markedly elevated calcium-phosphate product, and it carries a high mortality rate. The usual clinical presentation is of painful, stellate necrosis of the thighs or buttocks, often in the setting of livedo reticularis. Death usually results from septicemia. OBJECTIVE: This report documents an unusual case of recurrent, self-limiting calciphylaxis in the setting of a patient with ESRD and discusses the clinical and pathologic features of this potentially very fatal disorder. METHODS AND RESULTS: A 52-year-old woman presented with a greater than one-year history of relapsing and remitting, exquisitely painful, necrotic, numular plaques on the abdomen, breast, and arm. This patient had a markedly elevated calcium-phosphate product and parathyroid hormone level. The diagnosis of calciphylaxis was made by wedge biopsy of the most recent plaque, revealing calcification of medium-sized subcutaneous vessels and lobular capillaries with associated epidermal necrosis. CONCLUSIONS: This case demonstrates an unusual clinical variant of calciphylaxis that presented without the characteristic stellate necrosis or livedo reticularis that normally marks this condition and spontaneous resolution without incurring septicemia. Regardless of morphology, calciphylaxis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of painful, necrotic lesions occurring in the setting of ESRD.

What to do at low doses: a bounding approach for economic analysis.

To quantify the health benefits of environmental policies, economists generally require estimates of the reduced probability of illness or death. For policies that reduce exposure to carcinogenic substances, these estimates traditionally have been obtained through the linear extrapolation of experimental dose-response data to low-exposure scenarios as described in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment (1986). In response to evolving scientific knowledge, EPA proposed revisions to the guidelines in 1996. Under the proposed revisions, dose-response relationships would not be estimated for carcinogens thought to exhibit nonlinear modes of action. Such a change in cancer-risk assessment methods and outputs will likely have serious consequences for how benefit-cost analyses of policies aimed at reducing cancer risks are conducted. Any tendency for reduced quantification of effects in environmental risk assessments, such as those contemplated in the revisions to EPA's cancer-risk assessment guidelines, impedes the ability of economic analysts to respond to increasing calls for benefit-cost analysis. This article examines the implications for benefit-cost analysis of carcinogenic exposures of the proposed changes to the 1986 Guidelines and proposes an approach for bounding dose-response relationships when no biologically based models are available. In spite of the more limited quantitative information provided in a carcinogen risk assessment under the proposed revisions to the guidelines, we argue that reasonable bounds on dose-response relationships can be estimated for low-level exposures to nonlinear carcinogens. This approach yields estimates of reduced illness for use in a benefit-cost analysis while incorporating evidence of nonlinearities in the dose-response relationship. As an illustration, the bounding approach is applied to the case of chloroform exposure.

Valuation of childhood risk reduction: the importance of age, risk preferences, and perspective.

This article explores two problems analysts face in determining how to estimate values for children's health and safety risk reductions. The first addresses the question: Do willingness-to-pay estimates for health risk changes differ across children and adults and, if so, how? To answer this question, the article first examines the potential effects of age and risk preferences on willingness to pay. A summary of the literature reporting empirical evidence of differences between willingness to pay for adult health and safety risk reductions and willingness to pay for health and safety risk reductions in children is also provided. The second dimension of the problem is a more fundamental issue: Whose perspective is relevant when valuing children's health effects-society's, children's, adults-as-children, or parents'? Each perspective is considered, followed ultimately by the conclusion that adopting a parental perspective through an intrahousehold allocation model seems closest to meeting the needs of the estimation problem at hand. A policy example in which the choice of perspective affects the outcome of a regulatory benefit-cost analysis rounds out the article and emphasizes the importance of perspective.