Squamous cell carcinoma of the vulva in a virgin patient with Turner syndrome
Omer Lutfi Tapisiz,1Onur Topcu,1Tayfun Gungor,1Bulent Ozdal,1Levent Sirvan,2
and Ahmet Yesilyurt3
1Department of Gynecologic Oncology, Dr. Zekai Tahir Burak Women's Health Education and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
2Department of Pathology, Dr. Zekai Tahir Burak Women's Health Education and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
3Department of Genetics, Dr. Zekai Tahir Burak Women's Health Education and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Correspondence to Omer Lutfi Tapisiz. Department of Gynecologic Oncology, Dr. Zekai Tahir Burak Women's Health Education and Research Hospital, Turan Gunes Bulvari, Sedir Sitesi, C2 Blok, No:6, Oran, Ankara 06450, Turkey. Tel: 90-505-319-7577, Fax: 90-312-312-4931, Email: omertapisiz@yahoo.com.tr
Received August 15, 2010; Accepted October 06, 2010.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Two types of gynecologic tumors are commonly described in the Turner syndrome, the first one is gonadoblastoma, which occurs in patients with Y chromosome abnormalities, and the second one is endometrial carcinoma which is mostly related with exogenous estrogen usage. Here, we describe an extremely rare case of squamous cell carcinoma of the vulva in a virgin woman with Turner syndrome. A 35-years old single, virgin woman referred to our Oncology Department with warty, necrotized, exophytic 6-7 cm vulvar mass. She had a history of primary amenorrhea and mosaic Turner syndrome was determined in her karyotype analysis. Biopsy specimen of the vulvar mass revealed squamous cell carcinoma of the vulva, and total vulvectomy with inguinal femoral lymphadenectomy was performed. The postoperative course was uneventful and there has been no recurrence of the disease up to date. Women with Turner syndrome have streak ovaries that produce very low estrogen and the squamous cell carcinoma of the vulva may have developed at an early age with Turner syndrome because of this low estrogen value similar to postmenopausal women. The current case is a special case due to its age of occurrence, virgin and Turner syndrome status.
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