Open AccessAn extremely rare case report of sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma of paranasal sinuses
Author(s) -
Abhishek Purkayastha,
Neelam Sharma,
Tejas Pandya,
Chhavi Arora
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
archives of medicine and health sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2321-6085
pISSN - 2321-4848
DOI - 10.4103/2321-4848.196203
Subject(s) - medicine , malignancy , biopsy , paranasal sinuses , sinus (botany) , pathology , differential diagnosis , ethmoid sinus , histopathology , craniotomy , radiology , botany , biology , genus
Sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma (SNUC) of the paranasal sinuses represents a very rare and extremely aggressive malignancy posing a diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma for treating physicians due to its location, vast array of differential diagnosis without any definite therapeutic guideline. With only a few cases described in the literature, we hereby report a 34-year-old male with progressive, painless swelling of the left eye and diminution of vision. Radiographic imaging showed a mass lesion in the left anterior ethmoid sinus. Biopsy of nasal mass seen on nasal endoscopy revealed a poorly differentiated malignancy. He underwent craniotomy and excision of tumor. Postoperative histopathology report showed SNUC staining positive for epithelial membrane antigen, neuron-specific enolase, and cytokeratin on immunohistochemistry. He received postoperative radiotherapy (RT) and chemotherapy but developed extensive skeletal metastasis, for which he was treated with palliative RT to which he responded well. At present, he was on close follow-up with a Karnofsky performance status of 60%