Epithelial Tumors

Epithelial tumors are the common tumors in the human body. The word “tumor” means “a swelling” and is generally used to describe a neoplastic mass. Some neoplastic tumors are self-limited, and while they may cause issues by occupying space, they will not invade other tissues, and are unable to invade vascular spaces and metastasize; these are benign tumors. Our example is the oral papilloma. Malignant tumors are able to invade adjacent tissues, and may invade vessels and spread to lymph nodes or other organs as metastases. With epithelial tumors, the defining behavior of an invasive malignancy is the ability of the tumor cells to cross the epithelial basement membrane, gaining access to and invading through the adjacent tissue. An epithelial malignancy that has not yet crossed the basement membrane is referred to as an in-situ lesion; we will review a case of a non-invasive papillary urothelial carcinoma.