Malignant sweat gland tumor of breast arising in pre-existing benign tumor: A case report

Abstract

BACKGROUNDSweat glands belong to skin appendages. Sweat gland tumors are uncommon, especially when they occur as malignant tumors in the breast. We report a case of malignant sweat gland tumor of the breast, including imaging and pathological findings.CASE SUMMARYA 47-year-old woman visited our hospital with a non-tender palpable lesion in her left breast. The lesion had not shown changes for 10 years. However, it recently increased in size. Sonography showed a well circumscribed cystic lesion with internal debris and fluid-fluid level. Magnetic resonance imaging showed a well circumscribed oval mass with T1 hyper-intensity compared to muscle and T2 high signal intensity. There was a small enhancing mural component in the inner wall of the mass. The tumor was resected. Its pathologic result was a malignant transformation of benign sweat gland tumor such as hidradenoma. The lesion was treated with excision and radiation therapy. At 1-year follow up, there was no local recurrence or metastasis in the patient.CONCLUSIONIn the case of a rapid growing cystic mass in the nipple and subareola, it is necessary to distinguish it from a malignant sweat gland tumor.

Hidradenocarcinoma of the Female Breast: A Surgical Approach to a Rare Skin Tumor

“…According to the literature, mainly due to its remarkably low incidence of 0.05%, less than 60 cases of hidradenocarcinoma have been reported [10]. Of those, only 11 articles concern instances of breast involvement [1,5,6,8,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Given that the diagnosis of hidradenocarcinoma relies on histological and immunohistochemical characteristics, these features have become the primary focus in the reported cases thus far.…”