Mucoepidermoid carcinoma and adenosquamous carcinoma

Mucoepidermoid carcinoma is a rare carcinoma in the lung and has the same histological patterns as described in salivary glands; it compromises younger patients and develops in the bronchial glands allowing an easy diagnosis in biopsies in low grade cases. Adenosquamous carcinoma is a mixed carcinoma with different ways of showing the two histological patterns that can be not clearly distinct; anti-keratins antibodies are useful to identify adenocarcinomatous and epidermoid cells and genetic studies are showing a common cell for both patterns; it can develop in the bronchi but is clearly preponderant in the periphery of the lung. Adenosquamous carcinoma is not a rare carcinoma in the lung, with the main incidence in man 10: 1 and compromising upper lobes preferentially.