Encapsulated papillary carcinoma of the breast: An overview

Any papillary growth of the breast presents both a diagnostic and a therapeutic challenge: For each one of them a diagnosis of whether they are malignant or benign in nature is required as well as appropriate staging and suitable treatment. In the international literature, we find a considerable amount of different terms being used for papillary breast growths. As a result, pathological and clinical evaluation is somewhat problematic. Encapsulated papillary carcinoma (EPC) is an interesting subgroup of breast papillary tumours. Because of its rarity, there have been only a limited number of large clinical studies that safely assess its appropriate treatment and expected outcome. However, more safe data exist in terms of prognosis - which seems to be excellent, as almost all published studies regarding these tumours have confirmed so far. We present a systematic overview of breast EPC and of the most important studies published on this topic in order to make diagnosis and treatment more straightforward for cancer clinicians. The information for this review was compiled by searching the Pubmed, Medline, Scopus, Embase, and ISI Web of Science databases for articles published from 1980 through December 2012. Electronic early-release publications were also included.