Solid-papillary carcinoma of the breast: clinicopathological study of 20 cases

The purpose of the present paper was to evaluate the clinicopathological and biological features of 20 Japanese patients with solid-papillary carcinoma of the breast (SPC) or SPC associated with invasive breast cancer. All the patients were Japanese women, including two sisters. The mean age was 66.0 years. The incidence of SPC among all the breast cancers treated at two institutions was 1.1% and 1.7%, respectively. The mean disease-free interval was 4 years 11 months. Axillary lymph node metastasis or tumor recurrence did not occur in any of the cases. Fifteen cases of SPC contained invasive cancers that ranged from <5% to 60% of the entire tumor area. Histological types of invasive cancers were mucinous carcinoma in five cases and neuroendocrine cell carcinoma in 10 cases. These results indicate that SPC is a potential precursor lesion for neuroendocrine carcinoma as well as mucinous carcinoma. When all the cases were classified and analyzed according to both the 2002 tumor node metastasis (TNM) classification system and the Nottingham histological grade, SPC patients, even those with invasive cancers, seemed to have longer disease-free survival compared to patients with the other invasive breast cancers of matching grade and stage. Clinicopathologically, SPC could be regarded as a separate type of ductal carcinoma in situ.