[Pathology of adrenocortical tumors: review and recent data]

Most adrenocortical tumors are benign; adrenocortical carcinomas are rare but their prognosis is poor and their therapeutic is sparse. In most adrenocortical tumors, the morphological approach brings sufficient elements to establish the differential diagnosis between a benign and a malignant tumor but in few cases, it is insufficient. Moreover, morphology is limited for predicting prognosis of adrenocortical carcinomas. These observations led to development of other approaches, in particular genetic approaches. These genetics findings already have repercussions for the patients in the development of molecular markers for diagnosis and prognosis and in the future they could help in the development of new morphological approaches, in particular immunohistochemical approaches.