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Anaplastic small cell (oat cell) carcinoma of the tonsils: report of two cases
R Heimann1, M F Dehou, B Lentrebecq
1Department of Pathology, Institut Jules Bordet, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
Abstract:
Two cases of anaplastic small cell (oat cell) carcinoma of the tonsils are presented. In the first, cervical metastases preceded the manifestation of the primary tumour by 2 years. In case 2 the tonsillar carcinoma was accompanied by a bronchial tumour of the same histological type and by cervical and axillary metastases. Positive Grimelius stain, positive immunohistochemical staining for chromogranin A and neurone-specific enolase and the presence, in case 1, of membrane-bound granules indicate that these tumours display many similarities with neuroendocrine carcinomas even if they originate from pluripotential ductal cells of tonsillar minor salivary glands and not from Kulchitsky-like cells.