Squamous cell carcinoma arising in a dentigerous cyst

Abstract

A 57-year-old Chinese man presented with a cystic lesion of the maxilla which was thought, on clinical and radiographic grounds, to be a dentigerous cyst associated with a dilacerated maxillary central incisor. The cyst was enucleated and histologic examination showed this to be a squamous cell carcinoma in continuity with the innocent cyst lining. The anterior part of the maxilla was resected via an intra-oral approach and the patient is alive and free from recurrence or metastases after three years. The authors conclude that the carcinoma arose from odontogenic epithelium but that this epithelium is not of the primordial or odontogenic keratocyst variety.