Clinicopathological Study of Skin Adnexal Tumors: A Single Institute Experience

Background: Skin adnexal tumors (SATs) encompass a very broad variety of rare dermatopathologic entities. Objective: The aim of the present study was to analyze an incidence and clinicopathological findings of patients with biopsy-proven ASTs.

Material and Methods: A retrospective review of all consecutive cutaneous tumors that were diagnosed at the Martin Biopsy Center in Martin from July 2019 to March 2021 was carried out. ASTs have been searched for from this file and studied based on their histologic type and line of differentiation, anatomic distribution, age, and gender.

Results: Among over 3,700 skin tumors a total of 38 ASTs in 38 individuals (21 males, 17 females) have been found. The age of the patients ranged from 22-89 years (mean 55.5 y.). The head and neck region was found to be the most common site affected (26/38; 68.4%), followed by extremities (8/38; 21.1%) and trunk (4/38; 10.5%). Tumors of hair follicle origin constituted the largest category (22/38; 57.9%), followed by sweat gland tumors (15/38; 39.5%) and tumors derived from sebaceous glands (1/38; 2.6%). Benign lesions accounted for all 38 cases. Trichoepithelioma was the most frequent lesion found in the category of follicular tumors and poroma was the most common among tumours with sweat gland differentiation.

Conclusion: An overall incidence of ASTs is low and in this institutional study they constituted about 1% of all cutaneous neoplasms. ASTs display a marked phenotypic heterogeneity, that is why many published studies have provided divergent results concerning their clinicopathological features.