Metastases to breast

Breast malignant, males, children
Carcinoma subtypes
Metastases to breast

Author: Monika Roychowdhury, M.D. (see Authors page)

Revised: 29 December 2016, last major update October 2012

Copyright: (c) 2001-2016, PathologyOutlines.com, Inc.

PubMed search: carcinoma [title] "metastases" to breast

Table of Contents

Cite this page: Metastases to breast. PathologyOutlines.com website. http://www.pathologyoutlines.com/topic/breastmalignantmet.html. Accessed July 14th, 2017.

Definition / general

See also metastases to male breast

Clinical features

Rare (1% - 2% of breast tumors), usually from contralateral breast (Arch Pathol Lab Med 2008;132:931)
Also lung, melanoma, ovary, kidney, stomach and thyroid (World J Surg Oncol 2007;5:74)
Usually occurs in patients with advanced disease
In children, rhabdomyosarcoma (alveolar variant) is most common metastasis to breast

Case reports

15 year old girl with osteosarcoma (Australas Radiol 1999;43:108)
18 year old woman with pancreatic islet cell tumor (Am J Surg Pathol 2006;30:912)
27 year old woman choriocarcinoma (AJR Am J Roentgenol 2005;184(3 Suppl):S53)
47 year old woman with melanoma (Diagn Cytopathol 2000;22:246)
48 year old woman with squamous cell carcinoma in lung (Anticancer Res 2008;28:1299)
50 year old woman with small cell carcinoma in lung (Diagn Cytopathol 2009;37:208)
53 year old woman with colonic carcinoid (Arch Pathol Lab Med 2003;127:1373)
59 year old woman with carcinoma in thyroid (Ann Pathol 1998;18:130)
61 year old woman with retroperitoneal leiomyosarcoma (Diagn Cytopathol 2007;35:508)
63 year old woman with colonic adenocarcinoma (J Korean Surg Soc 2011;81 Suppl 1:S43)
74 year old woman with chordoma (APMIS 2006;114:726)
81 year old woman with renal cell carcinoma (World J Surg Oncol 2007;5:25)
GI (World J Gastroenterol 2006;12:2958, Am J Clin Pathol 2004;121:884, Asian J Surg 2006;29:95)
Neuroendocrine tumor (Histopathology 2011;59:619)
Primary peritoneal carcinoma (Ann R Coll Surg Engl 2012;94:e57)
Renal carcinoid tumor (Am J Surg 2006;191:799, Diagn Cytopathol 2007;35:306)
Rhabdomyosarcoma (Pediatr Hematol Oncol 1996;13:277)
Salivary gland tumor (Acta Cytol 2002;46:377)
Small intestinal carcinoid (Arch Pathol Lab Med 2004;128:292, World J Surg Oncol 2006;4:15)
Various metastases may resemble inflammatory breast cancer (Breast Cancer 2008;15:315, Int J Dermatol 2007;46:303, Breast J 2009;15:176)

Gross description

Often superficial (in soft tissue), well circumscribed firm nodules without skin retraction or peau d’orange

Gross images

Images hosted on other servers:

Colonic adenocarcinoma

Microscopic (histologic) description

Most important feature is that it does not resemble a primary breast carcinoma
Usually no ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), although infiltrative pattern may resemble DCIS (Ann Diagn Pathol 2001;5:15)

Metastatic ovarian or peritoneal serous carcinoma to breast or axilla:

Rare, but may resemble poorly differentiated ductal carcinoma or micropapillary carcinoma
Tumors have papillary architecture, often WT1+ and GCDFP15 negative (Am J Surg Pathol 2004;28:1646, Am J Surg Pathol 1993;17:193), although breast mucinous carcinomas may also be WT1+ (Mod Pathol 2008;21:1217)

Microscopic (histologic) images

Images hosted on PathOut server: