A Clinical and Histopathological Study of Breast Carcinoma with Sclerosing Adenosis

Abstract

The incidence of breast carcinoma with sclerosing adenosis (SA) is growing steadily, but its clinical and histopathological features are not well known.
The purpose of this study was to identify the clinical and histopathological characteristics of breast carcinoma with SA. A retrospective review of the records of 1,225 women, who had undergone biopsy examinations at our institution between January 2005 and December 2009 revealed 57 histopathologically proven cases of SA. Forty-two of these 57 patients had breast carcinoma.
The average age of patients with initial unilateral breast carcinoma with SA was 47.8 years, which was much younger than that of patients with breast carcinoma as a whole (p<0.0001). Seventeen (40.5%) of the 42 initial breast carcinoma lesions were detected by screening mammography. The ratio of bilateral breast carcinoma was 26.2% (11/42) among cases of breast carcinoma with SA, and 8 of the 31 unilateral breast carcinomas were multicentric. Fifteen (48.4%) of the 31 patients with unilateral breast carcinoma had some risk lesions for subsequent development of invasive breast carcinoma. There were no significant differences in histological type, histological grade, or intrinsic subtype between the breast carcinomas associated with SA and breast carcinomas as a whole, but among the initial unilateral breast carcinomas with SA, 54.1% (20/37) were ductal carcinomas in situ (p<0.0001). When detected early by screening mammography, the prognosis of breast carcinoma with SA may be favorable, but attention should be paid to multifocal involvement of not only the affected breast but also the contralateral breast.