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Abstract  Lung “metastases” of benign meningiomas are rarely described events of biological and clinical interest. We, here, report of a 70-year-old healthy woman found by CT scan to have multiple lesions, the two largest in the right lung on routine examination. Anamnesis revealed that the patient underwent a surgical resection of cerebral meningioma 12 years before. The larger lung lesion was a 3-cm node located in the right lung and was removed by wedge resection. Macroscopically, it showed well-defined borders, whitish colour and firm consistency; histologically, it was uniformly composed by spindle meningothelial cells arranged in fascicules including psammoma bodies. The morphological and immunohistochemical features of this lesion, together with the similarity with the original cerebral tumour and its indolent evolution, led to a final diagnosis of “benign” meningioma metastatic to the lung. Lung metastatic meningiomas may be a diagnostic challenge because of their unusual site of presentation and the possible confusion with primitive lung meningiomas or primary mesenchymal lung lesions. They represent a typical example of “benign” tumours that may implant to the lung similar to other tumours, definitely considered benign but reported to rarely present unusual secondary localization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract??A late recurrence of Wilms? tumour (WT) 23?years after the primary diagnosis is described. The primary tumour occurred in a 10-month-old girl and showed various degrees of differentiation, including skeletal muscle phenotype. A postoperative chemotherapy was performed. Twenty-three years after the surgery, the tumour relapsed: the lesion was exclusively composed of mature skeletal muscle elements (diffuse and intense desmin reactivity) derived from the primary tumour as confirmed by WT1 immunoreactivity. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy have been reported previously to ablate the immature components of WT; especially, chemotherapy can modify the histological type, reducing the immature elements while leaving mature cells unaffected. We can hypothesise that both morphological and molecular features of the tumour as well as the effect of therapy can influence a tumour relapse in WT. The latter results in a high degree of differentiation and a long disease-free interval after the first diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  We propose multicore tissue microarray (TMA) as an alternative to whole section for routine assessment of prognostic factors in breast cancer. Since 2004, we introduced the multicore TMA for testing estrogen (ER) and progesterone receptors (PR), proliferation activity by Ki67, and HER2 overexpression and amplification in routine work. At least four tumor foci were selected on the whole section, and a dedicated technician used a stereomicroscope for accurate sampling of the selected areas. To identify a specific case in the TMA, a separate file and a computerized reporting form with the TMA map were created. A preliminary pilot study comparing the TMA results with those obtained on whole sections showed the specificity of the procedure. Moreover, in everyday diagnosis, hormone receptors were repeated on full section when negative in TMA, without significant discrepancy. Retrospective analysis of the 237 breast carcinomas studied by TMA showed the expected correspondence of tumor-grade differentiation with the hormone receptor pattern, the proliferation activity, and HER2 immunohistochemical and FISH values. In conclusion, multicore TMA may be an efficient approach in the routine study of prognostic factors in breast cancer, significantly reducing costs, time, and burden of slides necessary to accomplish these mandatory tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]