Morphometric evidence that epithelial basement membrane breaks are a feature of both squamous and basal cell carcinomas of the skin
✍ Scribed by Robert E. Hewitt; Vanessa Linton; Desmond G. Powe; William Sam; Alan Stevens; David R. Turner
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1996
- Tongue
- French
- Weight
- 577 KB
- Volume
- 66
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0020-7136
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
There have been reports that squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) and basal cell carcinomas (BCC) are surrounded by continuous epithelial basement membranes (EBMs). This argues against the hypothesis that EBM breaks are required for tumour invasion. We have used morphometric techniques to re-examine the evidence for SCCs and BCCs as objectively as possible. We assessed sections stained for type-lV collagen from I2 SCCs, 14 keratoacanthomas (KAs), 9 morphoeic BCCs, 10 nodular BCCs and 7 superficial multifocal BCCs. In the centre of these tumours, the EBM was generally more continuous than at the periphery, and this difference was statistically significant for SCCs, KAs and morphoeic BCCs (p < 0.0 I in all). By considering central and peripheral tumour regions separately, a significant difference was seen between SCCs and the difficult to distinguish benign tumour KA. In the centre of U s . EBM was significantly more continuous than in SCCs (p = 0.0029), which