Living with endometriosis: Comorbid pain disorders, characteristics of pain, and relevance for daily life

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Significance

[Primary malignant melanoma of the vagina--case report and review of the literature]

The primary malignant melanoma of the vagina is a very rare tumor with less than 300 cases reported worldwide. Metastatic melanomas of the vagina are even rarer and only 5 cases have been reported so far. We describe the case of patient with a melanoma of the left side of the vagina with a tumor size of 6 cm and a tumor invasion of 2.5 cm. At the time of diagnosis there were no signs of nodal metastases in the positron emission tomography. In the literature, wide local excision with adjuvant radiotherapy is recommended, and radical surgery with adjuvant radiotherapy as second-line therapy. Both procedures show similar 5-year survival rates. To reduce the risk of metastases, we had planned an immunotherapy with interferon-alpha, which has been shown to improve relapse-free and overall survival in patients with high-risk cutaneous melanoma. Unfortunately, the cancer was found to have heavily metastasized 6 months later; the patient therefore received a palliative chemotherapy with dacarbazine and thalidomide.

[Loss of metastatic deposits in breast sentinel lymph nodes during intra-operative frozen section analysis]

The intraoperative evaluation of sentinel lymph nodes is an ongoing debated issue. In this review we discuss different approaches to sentinel lymph node processing in an intra operative setting and in the consecutive embedding in paraffin. We propose a method, which uses routine intra operative examination of lymph nodes with stereo microscopy with selected frozen section analysis. We demonstrate preliminary data on a larger patient collective along with data on a control group. We could show in our study that a higher rate of metastates can be achieved avoiding intra operative frozen sections on grossly inconspicuous sentinel lymph nodes.

[Vulvar pseudolymphoma: detection of infection by Borrelia burgdorferi using polymerase chain reaction]

We report on a 42-year-old patient with a vulvar pseudolymphoma in association with an infection with Borrelia burgdorferi. The diagnosis was made using PCR amplification on a paraffin-embedded tissue sample. The lesions healed completely within 3 weeks of oral doxycycline therapy.