Background: Hidradenocarcinoma is a rare malignant sweat gland tumour, characterized by a slow but aggressive course, with high rates of local recurrence and metastasis. Due to its rarity, histological criteria and therapeutic guidelines are poorly defined, posing a major challenge for clinicians and pathologists.
Objectives: To present two new cases of metastatic hidradenocarcinoma as well as a review of the literature.
Materials & methods: We describe two case studies and a review of the literature based on a search using the MEDLINE (PubMed) electronic database.
Results: The first patient was a 61-year-old woman with a perimamillary hidradenocarcinoma that arose from the malignant transformation of a benign childhood lesion and developed regional lymph node metastases after wide excision and adjuvant radiotherapy. The second patient was a 63-year-old man who developed cutaneous and renal metastases several years after the complete excision of a lumbar hidradenocarcinoma. As far as we can ascertain, kidney metastasis from hidradenocarcinoma has not previously been described.
Conclusion: Most authors recommend wide excision as the treatment of choice for hidradenocarcinoma, however, optimal adjuvant therapy remains to be determined. Our cases add to the limited knowledge available, but high-quality studies to find new effective treatments are needed.
Keywords: Cutaneous adnexal neoplasms; eccrine carcinoma; hidradenocarcinoma; hidradenoma; sweat gland neoplasms.