Synonyms
Definition
A special type of breast carcinoma with a particularly favorable prognosis composed of well-differentiated tubular structures with open lumina lined by a single layer of low-nuclear-grade neoplastic epithelial cells.
Clinical Features
Incidence: Pure tubular carcinoma accounts for approximately 2% of invasive breast cancer in most series. Higher frequencies are found in cohorts enriched with small T1 breast cancers and in mammographic screening programs (Anderson et al. 2004; Rakha et al. 2010).
Age: Approximately 60–70% of tubular carcinomas present as non-palpable, mammographically detected, lesions and are more common in women in their sixth or seventh decade who are undergoing breast cancer screening.
Sex: Female. Rare in male as for other forms of breast cancer.
Site: Anywhere in the breast but most frequent in the upper outer quadrant like other types of breast cancer. Multifocality has been reported in up to 20% of...
References and Further Reading
Anderson, W. F., Chu, K. C., Chang, S., & Sherman, M. E. (2004). Comparison of age-specific incidence rate patterns for different histopathologic types of breast carcinoma. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 13(7), 1128–1135.
Diab, S. G., Clark, G. M., Osborne, C. K., Libby, A., Allred, D. C., & Elledge, R. M. (1999). Tumor characteristics and clinical outcome of tubular and mucinous breast carcinomas. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 17(5), 1442–1448.
Fedko, M. G., Scow, J. S., Shah, S. S., Reynolds, C., Degnim, A. C., Jakub, J. W., & Boughey, J. C. (2010). Pure tubular carcinoma and axillary nodal metastases. Annals of Surgical Oncology, 17(Suppl 3), 338–342.
Papadatos, G., Rangan, A. M., Psarianos, T., Ung, O., Taylor, R., & Boyages, J. (2001). Probability of axillary node involvement in patients with tubular carcinoma of the breast. British Journal of Surgery, 88(6), 860–864.
Rakha, E. A., Lee, A. H., Evans, A. J., Menon, S., Assad, N. Y., Hodi, Z., Macmillan, D., Blamey, R. W., & Ellis, I. O. (2010). Tubular carcinoma of the breast: Further evidence to support its excellent prognosis. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 28(1), 99–104.
Sullivan, T., Raad, R. A., Goldberg, S., Assaad, S. I., Gadd, M., Smith, B. L., Powell, S. N., & Taghian, A. G. (2005). Tubular carcinoma of the breast: A retrospective analysis and review of the literature. Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, 93(3), 199–205.
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Rakha, E. (2018). Tubular Carcinoma. In: van Krieken, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Pathology. Encyclopedia of Pathology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28845-1_4720-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28845-1_4720-1
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