Metastatic disease in the breast from nonmammary neoplasms

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in women. The metastatic involvement of the breast from nonmammary neoplasms is a relatively rare condition. Female patients are affected five to six times more frequently than male patients. We present seven patients with metastasis in the breast from extramammary tumors. Females seemed to be more frequently affected (6 women and 1 man) and included a wide range of ages (17-70 years old). All female patients had suspicious-looking abnormalities (B1-RADS 4) or lesions highly suspicious of malignancy (BI-RADS 5) in the mammography, without a confirmative fine needle aspiration cytology. The primary malignancies were equally distributed between non-hematological (1 renal adenocarcinoma, 1 melanoma, 1 leiomyosarcoma) and hematological (1 non-Hodgkin's, 2 Hodgkin's lymphomas and 1 leukemia). Treatment is therefore modified, taking into consideration the treatment and prognosis of the primary disease.