Patterns of recurrence in patients with melanoma and histologically negative but RT-PCR-positive sentinel lymph nodes.

Background: We studied the patterns of recurrence of patients with only reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) evidence of regional nodal spread to see whether or not proposed treatment interventions are likely to be effective.

Study Design: One hundred seventy-five patients who underwent selective lymphadenectomy for clinical stage I and II melanomas were included in this analysis. We preserved a portion of each sentinel lymph node (SLN) in liquid nitrogen in the operating room and performed RT-PCR on the specimens to detect the melanoma/melanocyte-specific marker tyrosinase.

Villous adenoma of the urinary tract: a lesion frequently associated with malignancy.

Villous adenomas arising in the urinary tract are rare. We identified 18 cases of villous adenomas of the bladder, urachus, and prostatic urethra. Patients ranged in age from 53 to 93 years with an average age of 69.

Metastatic renal cell carcinoma presenting as an oral tumor.

Metastatic cancer presenting as an oral lesion is exceedingly uncommon. To the best of our knowledge this is the first reported instance of renal cell carcinoma presenting initially as an oral lesion.

Correlation of mechanical imaging and histopathology of radical prostatectomy specimens: a pilot study for detecting prostate cancer.

Purpose: A new modality termed mechanical imaging has recently been developed. We determined whether mechanical imaging could be used to detect prostate cancer in radical prostatectomy specimens.

Materials And Methods: Stress patterns on the surface of excised prostates were evaluated using the data obtained from a planar piezoelectric resistive force sensor array.

Minimally invasive staging of patients with melanoma: sentinel lymphadenectomy and detection of the melanoma-specific proteins MART-1 and tyrosinase by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction.

Background: A minimally invasive standard has yet to be developed for sentinel lymphadenectomy, and many patients undergo this procedure in the main operating room under general anesthesia. These patients often have microscopic metastases in sentinel nodes that could be missed by histopathologic examination. Techniques of reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) could detect these metastases if the nodes could be preserved intraoperatively.