Epidemiological study of Appendageal skin tumors in tertiary health centre in central India

Abstract

Introduction: Cutaneous appendageal tumours are a large diverse group of tumours that are commonly classified according to their state of appendageal differentiation- eccrine, apocrine, follicular and sebaceous. Most appendageal tumors are relatively uncommonly encountered in routine clinical practice. Though some of the appendageal tumors (e.g. syringoma, nevus sebaceous) can be diagnosed clinically with ease but most of them have non-specific morphological appearance and their diagnosis is mainly based on histopathological characteristics.

Material and methods: It was a cross sectional descriptive study conducted in the department of dermatology, Chirayu medical college and hospital, Bhopal. A total of 90 patients attending department of dermatology were screened out for appendageal tumors and those 60(66.6%) who were confirmed by histopathological examination of lesional biopsy were included in the study.

Results: On the basis of differentiation of tumors, sweat gland tumors were the most common appendageal tumors in our study (79.8%) followed by follicular tumors (11.6%), sebaceous were 8.3%. On individual tumor basis, syringoma constituted maximum numbers of cases (56.6%) followed by multiple trichoepitheliomas and hidrocystoma (both 11.6%). Face was the commonest site of predilection 40(66.6%) followed by scalp 12(20%).

Conclusion: Appendageal tumors are relatively uncommon and constitute very small proportion of dermatological disorders. Though clinical appearance might help in diagnosing common appendageal tumors but histological examination remains the gold standard method in diagnosing clinically suspicious lesions.