BACKGROUND Use of morcellation during laparoscopic hysterectomy may result in seeding of uterine tissue throughout the abdominal cavity and development of 'iatrogenic' leiomyomatosis peritonealis disseminata. CASE Two years after a supracervical laparoscopic hysterectomy a 42-year-old parous women presented with abdominal pain and bloating. CT scans and subsequent surgical exploration reveled...

Cutaneous piloleiomyomas are benign smooth muscle tumors arising from the arrector pili muscles. Piloleiomyomas appear as firm dermal papules of skin color or with a reddish to brown surface, and are commonly located on the extremities. Histologically, these lesions are composed of interlacing bundles of smooth muscle cells in the reticular dermis. Our case presented with an unusually large nod...

Angioleiomyomas that present with no symptoms are extremely rare, except when located on the head and neck. 1 Three cutaneous variants of this tumor have been described: piloleiomyoma, which originates in the erector pili muscle; angioleiomyoma, which originates in the smooth muscle of blood vessel walls; and genital leiomyoma, which originates in the smooth muscle of the scrotum, vulva, or nip...

In the present issue of Circulation, Chang et al1 report novel shear stress–sensitive paracrine mechanisms that regulate the activity of bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) in the vascular wall. BMP2 and BMP4 are structurally related members of the transforming growth factorsuperfamily. Recent studies demonstrated that vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cells are a significant source of BMPs...