Cytopathological diagnosis of adult retinoblastoma in a vitrectomy specimen

Adult onset retinoblastoma

Retinoblastoma (RB) is the most common primary malignant intraocular tumor of childhood presenting usually before 5 years of age. RB in adults older than 20 years is extremely rare. A literature search using PubMed/PubMed Central, Scopus, Google Scholar, EMBASE, and Cochrane databases revealed only 45 cases till date. Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of such reports, indicating heightened level of suspicion among ophthalmologists. Compared to its pediatric counterpart, adult onset RB poses unique challenges in diagnosis and treatment. This article summarizes available literature on adult onset RB and its clinical and pathologic profile, genetics, association with retinocytoma, diagnostics, treatment, and outcomes.

Retinoblastoma in adults: a case report and literature review

Purpose:

To report a case of adult retinoblastoma with a wrong diagnosis of melanoma.

Case report:

Herein, we present an adult retinoblastoma case who was misdiagnosed as melanoma in fine-needle aspiration biopsy with intravitreal hemorrhage and later neovascular glaucoma after biopsy. The diagnosis of retinoblastoma was confirmed after enucleation.

Conclusion:

Retinoblastoma should be considered in the differential diagnosis of an intraocular mass in adults, especially when media haziness precludes adequate ophthalmoscopic visualization.

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.

Retinoblastoma in a young adult mimicking Coats' disease

Retinoblastoma is the most common childhood primary intraocular malignancy, with the majority of cases being diagnosed before 5 years of age. Retinoblastoma in adults is extremely rare. Here, we report the case of a 20-year-old man who presented with a 3 year history of blurred vision in the right eye. Imaging did not reveal the typical presentation of retinoblastoma. After considering Coats' disease, a diagnosis of late-presenting retinoblastoma was made through cytological analysis. Diagnosis of retinoblastoma should be considered in the presence of uncertain mass lesions in the fundus of an adult.