[Marjolin's ulcer associated with verrucous carcinoma in an immunocompromised patient].

BACKGROUND

Marjolin's ulcer is the malignant degeneration of any chronic wound, with a latency period from tissue injury to variable malignant transformation that may occur up to 30 years later. Among the associated neoplasms, squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the predominant lineage in up to 71% of cases. The verrucous carcinoma variant has been estimated to have a low presentation, being described in the literature as 2% of all SCC and reported anecdotally in immunosuppressed patients, which justifies the objective of this publication.

CLINICAL CASE: 65-year-old female patient with a history of being a carrier of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, who presented a verrucous carcinoma associated to a Marjolin ulcer secondary to herpes zoster and infection of soft tissues in the right leg, with a latency period of 10 years from the initial infectious process to histopathological confirmation.

CONCLUSIONS

The finding of a verrucous carcinoma on a Marjolin ulcer has been little described in literature, with a lower incidence in the context of a patient with a history of being a carrier of HIV infection, finding 7 case reports, the oldest from 1998. For this reason, it is important to have diagnostic suspicion, to carry out an adequate study protocol and always making clinical-pathological correlation, in order to establish timely and individualized treatment.