BACKGROUND: A retrospective and anatomopathological study was performed on 704 basal carcinomas of 623 patients, diagnosed from 1991 to 1996, at the Dermatopathology section of the Dermatology Clinic of the Hospital das Clinicas, UFPE and at a private dermatopathology laboratory in the city of Recife. OBJECTIVE: To characterize the clinical and anatomopathological aspects of the basal cell carcinomas diagnosed by the two services of Pernambuco region. METHODS: For the clinical study, the data were collected from the patient files and for the anatomopathological, macro and microscopic study a revision was made of the histological specimens. For determination of vertical growth, methods were used based on Clark and Breslow's histoprognostic techniques applied to malignant melanoma. RESULTS: Clinical: the highest incidence was in the feminine sex (55.7%) and in the 55 to 72-year-old age group. Disease duration was highly variable, ranging from one month to 40 years, and the head was the most frequent topographical area (73.8%), mainly nasal (21.1%) and zygomatic (18.5%). The nodular pigmented form (47.4%) was found most frequently and the size of the lesions did not depend on the disease duration. Histologically the patterns considered based only on the parenchymal arrangements, were the adenoid, compact, plexiform Pinkus fibroepithelioma, pseudocystic, reticulated, superficial and trichoepithelioid, though predominantly the adenoid form (28.3%). The mean growth involved 2/3 of the reticular dermis (32.4%), and the deepest tumors presented intense fibroplasia. There was concomitance of several cellular types within a single tumor and melanin pigment was found mostly in the trichoepithelioid type. CONCLUSION: The clinical and anatomopathological characterization of the basal cell carcinomas is of fundamental importance at these services, where there is no major difference between groups, calling attention to behavioral definitions and propositions for the histopathological report of these tumors.
carcinoma
