Clear-cell hidradenoma in a child: a diagnostic dilemma for the cytopathologist

Cyto-Histopathological Correlation of Skin Adnexal Tumors: A Short Series

Background:

Skin adnexal neoplasms are relatively rare and thus uncommonly encountered in routine pathology practice.

Aims:

The present study was conducted with the aim to diagnose various skin adnexal tumors on fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) followed by confirmation on histopathology and immunohistochemistry of the excised tumor.

Materials and Methods:

A total of 11 cases of superficial nodular swellings of the skin were studied over a period of 2 years from 2015 to 2016. FNAC of the swelling was performed and slides were stained with Giemsa stain. Following FNAC, the swelling was excised and subjected to histopathological examination. Immunohistochemistry was performed in some cases for confirmation.

Results:

It was observed that overall incidence of adnexal tumors (ATs) encountered on FNAC was very low. Typing of ATs on cytology was possible in 82% cases (9/11 cases) with diagnostic accuracy of 88% (8/9 cases). Most common tumor encountered in the study was nodular hidradenoma followed by pilomatrixoma, trichoepithelioma, cylindroma, chondroid syringoma, and trichilemmal cyst. Majority of the cases were benign except one case, which subsequently turned malignant.

Conclusion:

FNAC is a simple, safe, and cost-effective tool in diagnosing skin ATs. Cytological diagnosis of these lesions is depends on clinical correlation and cytomorphological features. FNAC in lesions suspected to be malignant can guide the surgeon regarding extent of excision.

Authors attain comparable or slightly higher rates of citation publishing in an open access journal (CytoJournal) compared to traditional cytopathology journals - A five year (2007-2011) experience

BACKGROUND

The era of Open Access (OA) publication, a platform which serves to better disseminate scientific knowledge, is upon us, as more OA journals are in existence than ever before. The idea that peer-reviewed OA publication leads to higher rates of citation has been put forth and shown to be true in several publications. This is a significant benefit to authors and is in addition to another relatively less obvious but highly critical component of the OA charter, i.e. retention of the copyright by the authors in the public domain. In this study, we analyzed the citation rates of OA and traditional non-OA publications specifically for authors in the field of cytopathology.

DESIGN

We compared the citation patterns for authors who had published in both OA and traditional non-OA peer-reviewed, scientific, cytopathology journals. Citations in an OA publication (CytoJournal) were analyzed comparatively with traditional non-OA cytopathology journals (Acta Cytologica, Cancer Cytopathology, Cytopathology, and Diagnostic Cytopathology) using the data from web of science citation analysis site (based on which the impact factors (IF) are calculated). After comparing citations per publication, as well as a time adjusted citation quotient (which takes into account the time since publication), we also analyzed the statistics after excluding the data for meeting abstracts.

RESULTS

Total 28 authors published 314 publications as articles and meeting abstracts (25 authors after excluding the abstracts). The rate of citation and time adjusted citation quotient were higher for OA in the group where abstracts were included (P < 0.05 for both). The rates were also slightly higher for OA than non-OA when the meeting abstracts were excluded, but the difference was statistically insignificant (P = 0.57 and P = 0.45).

CONCLUSION

We observed that for the same author, the publications in the OA journal attained a higher rate of citation than the publications in the traditional non-OA journals in the field of cytopathology over a 5 year period (2007-2011). However, this increase was statistically insignificant if the meeting abstracts were excluded from the analysis. Overall, the rates of citation for OA and non-OA were slightly higher to comparable.