Ewing sarcoma/primitive neuroectodermal tumor of the kidney: two unusual presentations of a rare tumor

Only few cases of primary renal Ewing's sarcoma have been reported in the literature to date. We present here two cases of renal ES/PNET with an uncanny presentation. The first case was discovered after the patient presented clinically with irradiating flank pain, mimicking the pain related with kidney stones. The second case had clinical presentation of pulmonary thromboembolism after the patient was involved in an automobilist accident. The tumors were mainly composed of small blue cells which by immunohistochemical were positive for neural markers, and FISH revealed the translocation 22q12 for the EWSR1 gene. The diagnosis of renal primitive neuroectodermal tumor/EWING tumor is very rare and usually involves several different diagnostic techniques. The differential diagnosis is usually broad with frequent overlapping features between the entities. The cases presented in this paper illustrated the difficulties with which routine anatomical pathologist is faced when dealing with rare renal poorly differentiated neoplasm in adults.