Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma of the Paranasal Sinuses in a 57-Year-Old Woman With 1:16 Translocation

Abstract

Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma is an uncommon tumor. It is araremalignancy in adults and rarely occurs in paranasal sinuses in thoseaged older than 50 years. This report describes a locally invasi and destructive alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma arising in the ethmoidsinus of a 57-year-old woman. The small round blue cell tumors are positive for myogenin by immunohistochemistry and have a karyotype of 45, XX, -5, -13, der(16)t(1;1) (q21;q13) by cytogenetic analysis. Fluorescence in situ hybridization demonstrated a complex translocation with break apart of the FKHR region, which supports a diagnosis of alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. This report characterizes this tumor through microscopic and cyto-genetic analysis and emphasizes the importance of considering rhabdomyosarcoma in the differential diagnosis of small round cell tumors of the head and neck region in the middle-aged adults.