Pathology Outlines - Metaplastic carcinoma

Breast malignant, males, children
Carcinoma subtypes
Metaplastic carcinoma - spindle cell subtype

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

Revised: 28 October 2016, last major update October 2012

Copyright: (c) 2002-2016, PathologyOutlines.com, Inc.

PubMed Search: Metaplastic carcinoma [title] breast

Table of Contents

Cite this page: Metaplastic carcinoma - spindle cell subtype. PathologyOutlines.com website. http://www.pathologyoutlines.com/topic/breastmalignantmetaplasticspindle.html. Accessed July 14th, 2017.

Definition / general

Sarcomatoid morphology, plus either limited (< 5%) invasive carcinoma component or keratin positive sarcoma component (Am J Surg Pathol 2005;29:1456)
Excludes low grade fibromatosis-like metaplastic tumors
Note: some cases called spindle cell carcinoma in the literature have > 5% invasive carcinoma component

Terminology

Also called sarcomatoid carcinoma or spindle cell carcinoma

Clinical features

Sarcoma-like behavior (Am J Surg Pathol 2005;29:1456)
Aggressive, high rate of local relapse and extranodal metastases
Rate of nodal metastases varies from minimal (Am J Surg Pathol 2006;30:300) to 40% (Eur J Surg Oncol 2003;29:600)

Case reports

80 year old woman with a single, palpable irregular breast mass (Univ Pittsburgh Case #294)
84 year old woman with triple negative mixed metaplastic breast carcinoma with squamous and spindle cells (BMJ Case Rep 2012 Feb 25)
Woman with spindle cell carcinoma of the breast (Breast Dis 2011;33:115)

Clinical images

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