Malherbe's calcifying epithelioma--comment on two clinical cases

Malherbe's calcifying epithelioma (also called trichomatricoma, pilomatrixoma or pilomatricoma) is an uncommon benign cutaneous tumor, which takes the form of a solitary, firm, asymptomatic, slowly growing nodule, developed subcutaneously on the face, neck, or proximal upper extremity. With an incidence of 1/800-1000 cutaneous tumors, pilomatricoma is more common in the first two decades of life, predominantly affecting the women. Multiple locations and associations between this entity and other diseases such as Steinert's myotonic dystrophy or Gardner syndrome have been described in the literature. The clinical diagnosis is often difficult, most cases being mistaken as sebaceous cysts. The treatment of choice is surgical excision. Incomplete surgical excision can be followed by local recurrence because most lesions are poorly defined; therefore, patients should be monitored after surgical excision to prevent this from happening. We present two cases admitted in 2010 and 2011 to the Iasi Department of Oral and Maxillo-Facial Surgery: a 55-year-old female patient with a Malherbe's calcifying epithelioma located in the left temporal region, and a 51-year-old female patient with the same disease but located in the left masseter region.