The clinical behavior of mixed ductal/lobular carcinoma of the breast: a clinicopathologic analysis.
BACKGROUND
To date, the clinical presentation and prognosis of mixed ductal/lobular mammary carcinomas has not been well studied, and little is known about the outcome of this entity. Thus, best management practices remain undetermined due to a dearth of knowledge on this topic.


METHODS
In this paper, we present a clinicopathologic analysis of patients at our institution with this entity and compare them to age-matched controls with purely invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) and historical data from patients with purely lobular carcinoma and also stain-available tumor specimens for E-cadherin. We have obtained 100 cases of ductal and 50 cases of mixed ductal/lobular breast carcinoma.


RESULTS
Clinically, the behavior of mixed ductal/lobular tumors seemed to demonstrate some important differences from their ductal counterparts, particularly a lower rate of metastatic spread but with a much higher rate of second primary breast cancers.


CONCLUSIONS
Our data suggests that mixed ductal/lobular carcinomas are a distinct clinicopathologic entity incorporating some features of both lobular and ductal carcinomas and representing a pleomorphic variant of IDC.
Suryadevara
Aparna
A
Division of Hematology-Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIU), Springfield, IL 62794-9677, USA.
Paruchuri
Lakshmi P
LP
Banisaeed
Nassim
N
Dunnington
Gary
G
Rao
Krishna A
KA
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D015820:Cadherins / Q000378:metabolism; D018270:Carcinoma, Ductal, Breast / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D018275:Carcinoma, Lobular / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007124:Immunoenzyme Techniques; D008875:Middle Aged; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D015996:Survival Rate
D015820:Cadherins