Histopathological study of lesions of the caruncle: a 15-year single center review

Retrospective, observational case series. Records of caruncle lesions examined at the Henry C. Witelson Ocular Pathology Laboratory, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, between 1993 and 2008 were analyzed, comparing the clinical and histopathological findings.A total of 42 lesions from 42 patients were analyzed. Twenty-six (61.90%) of the patients were women and 16 (38.10%) were men and the age range from 20 to 84. The main diagnoses were: 16 epithelial lesions (38.09%), 14 inflammatory lesions (31.70%), 10 melanocytic lesions (21,95%), 2 lymphoid lesions (4.87%). From the 28 cases that had a preoperative clinical hypothesis only 17 presented a histopathological confirmation of the diagnosis (60.71%).The most common caruncle lesions were epithelial tumors followed by chronic inflammation and melanocytic lesions. Although most of the lesions were benign, there was a great number of misdiagnose based on the clinical suspicious.The caruncle is a modified cutaneous tissue located at the inner canthus of the eye, medial to the plica semilunaris. It is attached to the medial rectus and contains hair follicles, accessory lacrimal glands, sweat glands, lobules of fat, and sebaceous glands [1-3]. These different types of tissues can give rise to a wide variety of lesions; most of them benign, but the variety of lesions that affect the caruncle make the clinical diagnosis difficult [3,4]. Caruncle lesions usually show inconsistency between clinical and histopathological diagnosis, which can be as high as 50% [3,5,6].The aim of this study was to determine the frequency and describe the histopathological features of caruncle lesions over a 15-year period.A single-center, retrospective analysis was performed on 42 records of 42 caruncle lesions from The Henry C. Witelson Ophthalmic Pathology Laboratory and Registry, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, over a period of 15 years, comparing the clinical and histopathological findings.A total of 42 lesions from 42 patients were an