Superficial esophageal carcinoma composed of basaloid, adenocarcinomatous, and squamous components

A 60-year-old man diagnosed with esophageal cancer of the lower thoracic esophagus was referred for curative operation. Thoracoscopic esophagectomy with two-field lymph node dissection was performed without neoadjuvant therapy. Histopathological findings revealed three different components of carcinoma in the same tumor specimen: basaloid, adenocarcinomatous and squamous components. These different components of the tumor histological subtypes existed separately with clear borderline, but the histological transition among these components was partially appreciated. All of components were associated with different patterns in immunohistochemistry. The patient was well without recurrence 24 months after operation. It is well known that esophageal carcinoma have histological variety and variant types of esophageal carcinoma frequently colocalized with squamous component. However, the presence of three components which occupied the same proportion of the lesion in the superficial carcinoma has not been reported to the best of our knowledge. We finally interpreted this tumor as a composite tumor arising from squamous epithelium and differentiated into three different histologic phenotypes. Because of the various morphological features of esophageal carcinoma, detailed histopathological analysis of surgical specimens plays pivotal roles in obtaining their clinicopathological features.