Rationale:
Primary breast angiosarcoma (PBA) is a rare and overly aggressive entity and account for less than 1% of all breast cancer cases. PBA had a high rate of delayed preoperative diagnosis due to absent distinctive radiographic characteristics.
Patient concerns:
We report a case of a 47-year-old female patient who had a previous history of luminal cancer in the right breast with mastectomy; the patient complained of asymmetrically diffuse enlarged, accompanying with a painless mass in the left breast 12 years after the mastectomy of her right breast.
Diagnoses:
The tumor mimicked idiopathic granulomatous mastitis on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the first presentation. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) was performed for further lesion characterization and showed heterogeneous rapid hyper enhanced. An ultrasound-guided core needle biopsy was performed, and the pathology report indicated a breast angiosarcoma.
Interventions:
The patient underwent a nipple-sparing simple mastectomy with immediate reconstruction of the left breast.
Outcomes:
After 8 months later, the tumor recurred, CEUS and MRI examination suggested PBA recurrence, then re-excision with implant removal was performed, the patient had a lung metastasis 4 months later eventually died 22 months after diagnosis.
Lessons:
It is not easy to diagnose PBA with the radiographic examination. This case's importance is by combining CEUS and MRI to reflect enhanced morphology and hemodynamic characteristics of PBA and help diagnose breast angiosarcomas.
Background
The association of radiotherapy with breast cancer survival in patients who underwent a mastectomy and had micrometastases in the sentinel lymph node is unclear.
Material/Methods
The survival benefit of radiotherapy was examined in patients with T0/1-T2N1mi breast cancer undergoing mastectomy plus sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB). Kaplan-Meier curves were employed for survival analysis and competing risk analysis, and a propensity score matching (PSM) cohort was enrolled to investigate whether such patients benefit from radiotherapy.
Results
We identified 2864 patients in the SEER database from 2004 to 2015. All eligible patients were divided into the radiotherapy and the no-radiotherapy cohorts. With the median follow-up of 53 months, 5-year breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) was 94.4% vs 95.2% (
P
=0.135), and 5-year overall survival (OS) was 91.2% vs 90.1% (
P
=0.466) in the radiotherapy cohorts and no-radiotherapy cohorts, respectively. The results of the competing risk analysis showed a comparable 5-year cumulative incidence of breast cancer-specific death (BCSD) in the radiotherapy and no-radiotherapy groups (5.5% vs 4.7%,
P
=0.107) but a higher 5-year cumulative incidence of other causes of death (OCD) in the no-radiotherapy cohort (3.3% vs 5.3%,
P
=0.011). No significant difference was observed for BCSS or OS in the PSM cohort.
Conclusions
Radiotherapy has no benefit for patients with T0/1-T2 breast cancer undergoing mastectomy with N1mi disease on SLNB. This analysis provides evidence that radiotherapy may safely be omitted in this group of patients.
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