Myofibroblastic tumors. Brief review of clinical aspects, diagnosis and differential diagnosis

Abstract

This review summarizes myofibroblastic tumours that have been characterized in the last years. These lesions include: fibromatoses in adults and infants (infantile digital fibromatosis and infantile myofibromatosis); myofibroma of adults, an almost exclusively solitary lesion in the skin which is characterized morphologically as a biphasic lesion composed of spindle-shaped eosinophilic tumour cells and more primitive mesenchymal tumour cells associated with a haemangiopericytoma-like vasculature; dermatomyofibroma (plaque-like dermal fibromatosis), a band-like myofibroblastic proliferation in young female patients, which is mainly located in the periaxillar region and in which distinction from more aggressive, plaque-like variant of dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans is mandatory; myofibroblastoma of the breast, a well-circumscribed lesion composed of spindle shaped, desmin-positive tumour cells, which is seen mainly in elderly male patients and has to be distinguished from other spindle cell lesions of the breast; angiomyofibroblastoma, a well-circumscribed myofibroblastic neoplasm of the vulva and vagina composed of avoid to round myoid tumour cells with scattered multinucleated cells, which forms a continuous morphological spectrum with the clinically more aggressive angiomyxoma in this location; intranodal myofibroblastoma, a distinctive proliferation of myofibroblastic cells associated with so-called amianthoid fibres, which is seen most commonly in inguinal lymph nodes; myofibroblastoma/myofibroblastic tumour of soft tissues, a variably well-circumscribed myofibroblastic lesion which lacks atypia and is composed of actin and/or desmin positive tumour cells, and poorly delineated sarcomas with myofibroblastic differentiation (myofibrosarcoma).