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Soft Tissue Tumors Part 3 - Muscle, Vascular, Nerve, Other

Botryoid variant of embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma

 

Author: Nat Pernick, M.D, PathologyOutlines.com, Inc.

Revised: 17 July 2009, last major update July 2009

Copyright: (c) 2002-2009, PathologyOutlines.com, Inc.

 

Terminology

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● Named for distinctive gross features (resembles a bunch of grapes)

● Also called sarcoma botryoides

 

Clinical

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● 25% of rhabdomyosarcomas, 10% of embryonal subtype

● Tumors are beneath mucosal membrane in walls of hollow structures (bladder, vagina, nasal cavity), extrahepatic bile ducts or near a space; rarely in eyelid or anal region

 

Treatment and prognosis

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● Very good prognosis (Zhonghua Bing Li Xue Za Zhi 2004;33:225, Am J Surg Pathol 2001;25:856), although may have late relapse (Pediatr Blood Cancer 2008;51:140)

● Treatment is conservative surgery plus radiation and chemotherapy (Int J Gynecol Cancer 2008;18:190)

 

Gross description

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● Resembles cluster of grapes or allergic nasal polyp

● Fleshy nodular polypoid projections of variable size into lumen

 

Gross images

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Clusters of edematous, grape-like masses                Bladder tumors

that protrude into lumen of hollow organs                 

 

 

Tumor of bile duct

 

Micro description

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● Hypercellular zone immediately beneath epithelium (Nicholson’s cambium layer - resembles hypercellular zones that produce growth rings in trees)

● Cells are undifferentiated, round or spindled with minimal cytoplasm, frequent mitotic figures

● Less cellular in deeper layers, composed of differentiating and undifferentiated cells resembling embryonal NOS

 

Micro images

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Condensation of tumor cells           Polypoid mass protruding                Cambium layer and underlying

in subepithelial zone                          beneath flattened epithelium          nevoid cells

 

AFIP images

 

                         

Polypoid or lobulated masses of cells covered by mucosa, with

underlying hypercellular zone of poorly differentiated cells (cambium layer)

 

 

Tumor may have only focal cambium layer, and consist primarily

of paucicellular edematous tissue with scattered undifferentiated or atypical large cells

 

 

Tumor with sheets of round or spindle cells

 resembling benign polyp or fibroinflammatory lesion

 

 

                        

Deep foci of hypercellularity is common with round or spindled undifferentiated cells mixed with differentiating rhabdomyoblasts

 

Other images: vaginal tumor

 

Positive stains

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● Desmin, MyoD1, smooth muscle actin, muscle specific actin (Pediatr Dev Pathol 2005;8:427)

 

End of Soft Tissue Tumors Part 3 - Muscle, Vascular, Nerve, Other > Botryoid variant of embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma

 

 

 

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