Patient: Female, 24-year-old Final Diagnosis: Neurofibroma Symptoms: Bulging of the hard palate Medication: — Clinical Procedure: — Specialty: Dentistry • Oncology Objective: Rare disease Background: Neurofibromas are benign tumors of neurological origin caused by the proliferation of Schwann cells and fibroblasts; they often occur in the skin and nerves as a symptom of von Recklinghausen disease. Solitary neurofibromas are also known to occur on their own, but solitary development in the hard palate is extremely rare and difficult to distinguish from schwannomas. The neural origin of solitary neurofibromas is also difficult to determine intraoperatively, and there have been no reports that clearly identify the neural origin of neurofibromas in the hard palate. Case Report: We report a case of a solitary neurofibroma originating in the hard palate in a 24-year-old woman. She presented to our department with a 1.2×0.8-cm dome-shaped left palate mass. After identification of the nerve at the source, the tumor was resected under general anesthesia. Histopathology was positive for S-100 and CD34 immunostaining, as well as for Alcian blue. Eventually, the mass was diagnosed as a neurofibroma. Conclusions: Solitary neurofibromas originating in the hard palate are difficult to differentiate from other neoplastic lesions, especially schwannomas, based on clinical findings alone. Therefore, it is important to perform a biopsy and immunostaining of the biopsied specimens for S-100 and CD34. In neurofibromas, tumor cells are loose and delicate, often with wavy or serpentine nuclei, and S-100 protein-positive cells are sparser than in schwannomas. An overall pathological diagnosis should be made with regard to CD34, taking into account that schwannomas are CD34-negative and neurofibromas are CD34-positive.

Oral cancer is a disease primarily in older adults and extremely rare in young adults. Risk factors for oral cancer are irritants such as tobacco smoke and alcohol and chronic mechanical irritants but mechanisms involved in carcinogenesis in young adults are unclear because of less exposure to their risk factors. Herein, we report a rare case of gingival squamous cell carcinoma in a 19-year-old female patient, in whom the tumor predictably originated in the gingival sulcular epithelium. Histopathological examination of the resected tissue showed a cancer cell nest invading from the gingival sulcular epithelium without a breakdown of the basement membrane of the marginal gingival epithelium. Six years after the surgery, no recurrence or metastasis has been detected.