Ripple/Carcinoid pattern sebaceoma with apocrine differentiation.

Sebaceoma is a benign sebaceous neoplasm, which has been reported to show characteristic growth patterns, such as, ripple, labyrinthine/sinusoidal, and carcinoid-like patterns. Another recent finding regarding in sebaceoma is the observation of apocrine differentiation within the sebaceoma lesion. This report describes a case of carcinoid (a partial ripple and labyrinthine) pattern sebaceoma with apocrine differentiation with a literature review and immunohistochemical studies. The various characteristic growth patterns in sebaceoma were suggested to simply be variations of the same growth pattern arranged in cords, namely, a unified term "ripple/carcinoid pattern." The primitive sebaceous germinative cells in sebaceoma may still have the ability to undergo apocrine differentiation. Most of the reports so far on sebaceoma with apocrine differentiation, including the present case, describe a ripple/carcinoid pattern, thus suggesting that ripple/carcinoid pattern sebaceoma is composed of more primitive sebaceous germinative cells than conventional sebaceoma.