The Pathologic Histology of Synovial Lesions of the Skin

It is curious that no one has ever studied and reported the pathologic histology of synovial lesions of the skin. Hyde, Lingenfelter,2Ormsby,3Sutton,4MacKee and Andrews,5and others, have assumed for various reasons that such lesions originated from the synovial lining of the articulation, tendon or bursa. The reasons for this assumption were: location, character of contents and the fact that surgeons found that the capsule of the cyst extended down to the articulation. MacKee and Andrews examined four cases roentgenographically, and in each instance the cyst was shown to extend down to the joint. A patulous connection with an articulation has never been demonstrated. It has been supposed that the cyst is a shut-off aneurysmal protrusion from a synovial membrane and that it secretes synovial fluid or a modification thereof. Montgomery and Culver,6in an article entitled "The Pathologic Anatomy of Synovial Lesions