Dermatológia pre prax 3/2015

Histological typing of cutaneous basal cell carcinoma – pitfalls in dermatopathological practice

In basal cell carcinoma (BCC) of the skin, determination of histological type is important point for further management strategy and treatment of the patient. Although its bioptical diagnosis is usually easy, a precise histological subtyping is often difficult. Due to significant structural variability of this cancer, there have been proposed various histopathological clasification systems until now. However, even today we do not have a uniform and generally accepted nomenclature of BCC of the skin. In addition, a situation is more complicated by the fact, this neoplasia frequently exhibit a combined microscopic picture consisted of several histological types. A present article provides the basic data about the classification of cutaneous BCC and importance and pitfalls of its histological subtyping in dermatopathological practice. It emphasizes prognostic significance of the aggressive-growth component found at the biopsy examination, as well as practical use of BCC cathegorization into low-risk and high-risk subgroup, based on tumor histomorphology.

Keywords: basal cell carcinoma, histological subtypes, classification.