Tall cell like tumors

Breast malignant, males, children
Carcinoma subtypes
Tall cell like tumors

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

Revised: 30 December 2016, last major update August 2012

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

PubMed Search: tall cell variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma

Table of Contents

Cite this page: Tall cell like tumors. PathologyOutlines.com website. http://www.pathologyoutlines.com/topic/breastmalignantthyroidliketumors.html. Accessed July 14th, 2017.

Definition / general

Very rare tumor resembling tall cell variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma, first described in 2003 (Am J Surg Pathol 2003;27:1114)

Terminology

Not part of WHO breast classification

Clinical features

Presents with palpable nodule
May have nodal metastases (Int J Surg Pathol 2007;15:14)

Microscopic (histologic) description

Solid or papillary nests of columnar / cuboidal cells with eosinophilic granular cytoplasm, round / oval nuclei with sharply defined nuclear membrane, nuclear grooves and eosinophilic pseudoinclusions
Also psammoma bodies

Cytology description

Abundant cellularity with isolated cells, sheets and papillary formations of epithelial cells with nuclear grooves (Int J Surg Pathol 2006;14:79)

Positive stains

Keratin, ER (alpha and beta), PR
Also androgen receptor, CEA, bcl2

Negative stains

Thyroglobulin, TTF1

Electron microscopy description

Cytoplasmic granules are mitochondria

Molecular / cytogenetics description

No BRAF mutations of thyroid carcinoma

Differential diagnosis

Metastatic tall cell variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma: clinical history of thyroid disease, thyroglobulin+, TTF1+ (Ann Pathol 1998;18:130)