Basal cell carcinoma: clinical and pathological features

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is a slow-growing, locally invasive malignant epidermal skin neoplasm that represents the most common malignancy in Caucasians. The clinical presentation of BCC can be extremely variable: nodular, ulcerative, superficial, morpheiform, pigmented, and fibroepithelioma of Pinkus are the main clinical variants described. Clinical factors influencing negatively prognosis of BCC are: anatomic location, recurrence and/or persistance at site after treatment, and tumor size. A precise correlations between clinical and histopathological variants is not always possible, especially in biopsy samples. From a histopathological point of view various subtypes has been described: nodular, superficial, infiltrating, morpheiform, micronodular, fibroepithelial BCC and basosquamous carcinoma. A classification system based by growth pattern allows the identification of high-risk subtypes with potential tumor recurrence and aggressive biologic behavior such as infiltrating, morpheiform, micronodular and basosquamous subtypes. Further histopathological aspects determining high risk clinical morbidity are the level of invasion, perineural and lymphovascular invasion, involved surgical margins. The awareness of these clinicopathological features is helpful to better select the appropriate treatment management.