Malignant eccrine spiradenoma: a meta-analysis of reported cases.

BACKGROUND

Malignant eccrine spiradenoma is an aggressive sweat gland tumor with poorly understood behavior and no currently accepted therapeutic regimen.

METHODS

An individual patient data meta-analysis with Kaplan–Meier survival curves was performed on 72 reported cases of malignant eccrine spiradenoma.

RESULTS

In 35 patients with no distant metastasis, local resection resulted in 100% disease-free survival. Of 7 patients with lymph node but no distant metastasis treated with surgical resection and lymph node dissection, 6 patients remained disease-free at final follow-up evaluation. For the 24 cases with confirmed distant metastatic disease, patient survival did not significantly differ between local resection and surgery with adjuvant chemoradiotherapy (P = .8763).

CONCLUSIONS

Heightened awareness is recommended among surgeons likely to treat this entity. An aggressive surgical approach is supported in the absence of metastasis. When lymph nodes are not clinically involved, sentinel node may have a role followed by lymph node dissection in patients with a positive node.