A clinico-pathological study on benign breast diseases

To study the patterns of clinically benign breast disease in females and to co-relate them with the pathological findings.

One hundred females who attended the Surgery Outpatients Department in Indira Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute, Pondicherry, with various forms of benign breast diseases during the period from October 2011 to September 2012, were studied. Early diagnoses by doing a triple assessment like a clinical examination, FNAC or a core needle biopsy and imaging methods like ultrasonography or mammography, were made within 72 hrs from the first consultation. The clinical diagnoses were compared with the cytological or histological findings wherever possible and their accuracies were evaluated.

Out of the 100 female patients who were studied, 87 patients who presented with breast lumps and fibroadenoma, accounted for 48% of the cases, which was the highest number of patients. Fibrocystic changes and breast abscesses came next with 18% and 12% cases respectively. We detected 3 cases of proliferative disease with atypia and one case with florid hyperplasia, which had high and low risk factors respectively, for developing invasive carcinoma. The oldest lady of the group who was clinically diagnosed to have benign disease, was detected to have invasive ductal carcinoma. They were treated in our hospital and were advised follow up.

Benign breast diseases are common in female patients and fibroadenoma is the commonest of them all. Triple assessment provided a quick diagnosis and it alleviated unnecessary anxiety from the patients about breast cancer. The clinical diagnosis of a breast lump, as confirmed by cytology and histology, was accurate in 91.95 % of the cases.