Abstract
Mucinous breast cancer (MBC) is a rare histological type of breast cancer characterized primarily by mucin's production and extracellular presence. MBC is usually associated with a better prognosis than other invasive breast neoplasms. Because of the low prevalence, MBC biology is not well understood. The aim of the present study was to introduce the last 2-year experience regarding MBC pathological diagnostics in our clinical center and comparison of the obtained data with invasive breast carcinoma of no special type (NST) comprising the most common invasive breast cancer. We identified 24 MBC cases representing 3.09% of all 766 invasive breast cancers, including 15 cases of pure type and 9 mixed MBCs. The median MBC patients' age at presentation was 65.5 years. Compared to NST, MBC presented a higher T stage with a statistically larger tumor median size, although lower regional lymph node involvement, tumor histological grade and TNM stage. MBC is a rare type of breast cancer, accounting for about 4% of all diagnosed breast cancers. Our findings are consistent with those published in recent years and show significant differences between MBC and NST cancer patients and also highlight differences between pure and mixed MBC, emphasizing the essence of their differentiation. MBC is associated with a better long-term prognosis than NST and is characterized by the less aggressive biological behavior expressed through favorable clinicopathologic features in terms of tumor grade, regional lymph node involvement and hormone receptor status.
Highlights
Mucinous breast cancer (MBC) is a rare histological type of breast cancer characterized primarily by mucin’s production and extracellular presence
We identified 24 MBC cases representing 3.09% of all 766 invasive breast cancers diagnosed in our clinical center within two years (2014–2015) and compared obtained data with the characteristics of invasive carcinoma of no special type comprising the most numerous type of breast cancer (76.29% in the present study), most often diagnosed (Table 1)
In the group of mucinous breast cancer, we identified 15 pure mucinous breast cancers (PMBC) (Fig. 1) and 9 mixed mucinous breast cancers (MMBC) (Fig. 2; Table 2)
Summary
Mucinous breast cancer (MBC) is a rare histological type of breast cancer characterized primarily by mucin’s production and extracellular presence. The aim of the present study was to introduce the last 2-year experience regarding MBC pathological diagnostics in our clinical center and comparison of the obtained data with invasive breast carcinoma of no special type (NST) comprising the most common invasive breast cancer. We identified 24 MBC cases representing 3.09% of all 766 invasive breast cancers, including 15 cases of pure type and 9 mixed MBCs. The median MBC patients’ age at presentation was 65.5 years. Breast cancer is a heterogeneous group of neoplasms containing various cancers characterized by significantly different biology, clinical course and prognosis. NST is a group of cancers that does not present any specific differentiating features of other histological types of breast cancer. The mixed type (MMBC) which includes infiltrating components such as ductal or lobular breast cancerlike and contains less than 90% of mucin[3]
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