Non functioning adrenocortical carcinoma. A rare case.

Adrenocortical carcinoma is a rare tumor and experience in its diagnosis and treatment is limited. We present a case of non functioning adrenocortical carcinoma in which the pre-operative diagnosis of a kidney tumor had been made and a radical nephrectomy was performed.

A cytologic, ultrastructural and immunocytochemical comparison of tumor cells and cell cultures originating in invasive bladder carcinoma.

Tumor cells and urine-voided cells from patients with invasive bladder carcinoma as well as from healthy patients were examined cytologically, ultrastructurally and immunocytochemically. The ultrastructure of tumor cells showed an abundant, dilated, rough endoplasmic reticulum in the form of membrane-bound vacuoles full of granular to fibrillar material located perinuclearly and/or paranuclearly. Some cells exhibited enlarged modified lysosomes containing sparce flocculent and particulate precipitate. Papanicolaou staining of these cells showed two basophilic cytoplasmic textures, one green glossy-patchy, perinuclearly and/or paranuclearly, well segregated from the other texture of peripheral hematoxylinophilic foamy cytoplasm, comparable to the cytologic features of cell cultures originating in invasive bladder carcinoma. PAS diastase showed double distribution and texture of the perinuclear glycosaminoglycans, a glossy accumulated mass and large granules. Glycosaminoglycan sacs similar to those of cell cultures were also present in tumor-dispersed cells. There was a nonspecific binding of antisera against lysozyme, human chorionic gonadotropin and alpha 1-trypsin in normal and tumor cells. Tumor cells and tissues were positive for alpha 1-chymotrypsin distributed perinuclearly and in large spheres. Normal cells lacked the above characteristics. The results indicate that it is feasible to use the aforementioned characteristics in conjunction with the existing bladder-cytologic criteria for malignancy as markers in urothelial cancer with regard to prognosis of superficial tumors with high malignant potential.

Malignant schwannoma of the adrenals. A rare case.

This a rare case of malignant adrenal schwannoma in a woman aged 38 years old without family history of neurofibromatosis. A diagnosis is impossible before surgery.

Primary localized amyloidosis of the urinary bladder.

A case is presented of a woman aged 78 with a primary location of amyloidosis of the bladder. The clinical symptoms and the cystoscopy initially suggested a vesical carcinomatous infiltration.

Primary transitional cell carcinoma of anterior male urethra: a rare case.

We report a rare case of primary transitional cell carcinoma in a man aged 56 years old. Approximately 600 cases of primary carcinoma of the male urethra have been accumulated until today (1). The 30 to 50 per cent of these neoplasms originate in the anterior urethra and only the 15 per cent are of the transitional cell type (2).