Papers of the Week

Squamous cell carcinoma of the ear canal is an entity that arises from the stratum spinosum; it is a rare neoplasm, with a low incidence presenting 1 to 6 cases per million inhabitants, so there is little literature on this pathology. The clinical presentation of temporal bone cancer is usually nonspecific, meaning that its diagnosis is always a late-stage discovery. The definitive diagnosis requires biopsy of the lesion for histopathological and immunohistochemical study to establish the behaviour and the degree of differentiation. We present the case of an adult female patient with a clinical history of osteoporosis, diagnosed with chronic otitis media of the left ear of years of evolution, accompanied by purulent secretion of the same ear that did not respond to multiple treatment regimens. The patient also presented with a headache of left temporal predominance refractory to conventional analgesia. Cranial CT scans showed an osteolytic lesion of the left temporal bone with dural invasion. After resection and biopsy of the lesion, moderately differentiated squamous cell carcinoma was confirmed.