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. 2017 Oct 3;9(3):7016.
doi: 10.4081/rt.2017.7016.

Mucinous cystadenocarcinoma of the breast: the challenge of diagnosing a rare entity

Nektarios Koufopoulos  1 , Christina Goudeli  2 , John Syrios  3 , Evangelos Filopoulos  4 , Lubna Khaldi  1
Affiliations

Mucinous cystadenocarcinoma of the breast: the challenge of diagnosing a rare entity

Nektarios Koufopoulos et al. Rare Tumors. .

Abstract

Mucinous cystadenocarcinoma is an extremely rare variant of primary breast tumor which is histologically similar to mucinous cystadenocarcinoma of the ovary and pancreas. Herein we report a case of a 63 years old woman diagnosed with diverse histological types of non-synchronous rare primary breast tumors, a medullary carcinoma of the right breast and a mucinous cystadenocarcinoma of the left breast. Macroscopically the neoplasm appeared multilocular filled with mucoid material. Under light microscopy the cystic areas were lined by columnar cells with abundant intracellular and extracellular mucin. Solid areas were composed of tall columnar cells with intracellular mucin. Moderate to marked atypia was noticed and tumor cells stained positive for cytokeratin 7 and negative for cytokeratin 20. Moreover tumor cells displayed a basal like immunophenotype expressed as followed: ER negative, PR negative, HER-2 negative, cytokeratin (CK5/6) positive and EGFR positive.

Keywords: Basal like; Breast; Embryogenesis; Mucinous cystadenocarcinoma.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: the authors declare no potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
A) The epithelium is moderately differentiated with single or pseudostratified basal nuclei that present mild atypia with intracellular mucin production. B) Extracellular mucin production in cystadenocarcinoma of the breast.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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