Squamous cell carcinoma over lupus vulgaris

Cutaneous tuberculosis is an infrequent infection in our milieu. Its most common clinical presentation is lupus vulgaris. It is known that squamous cell carcinomas may develop over inflammatory skin ulcers and lesions that have evolved over a long period, among them lupus vulgaris, especially if they have been previously treated with radiotherapy. We present two cases of squamous cell carcinoma that developed over lupus vulgaris lesions that had evolved over more than forty years, localized in the pectoral region in the first case, and on the face in the second. None of them had received any treatment whatsoever before the diagnosis of the squamous cell carcinoma. The tuberculin test was strongly positive in both cases, but only in one of them could Mycobacterium tuberculosis be isolated in the culture of the skin lesions. It should be mentioned that in our cases, radiotherapy was not an inducing factor in the development of the neoplasm.