Nodular Fasciitis of the Breast Mimicking Breast Cancer

Abstract

Nodular fasciitis is a benign proliferative lesion that is usually found in the soft tissue of the upper extremity and trunk in young to middle-aged persons. It has rarely been described in the breast. A 35-year-old woman had noticed a mass in her left breast. It was elastic-hard, 13 mm in size, and located mainly in the upper inner quadrant of the left breast. Mammography did not detect the mass. Ultrasonography revealed a hypoechoic lesion with an irregular margin. Neither fine-needle aspiration cytology nor core needle biopsy established a definitive diagnosis. Excisional biopsy was therefore performed. Histologically, the excised tumor tissue results were consistent with a diagnosis of nodular fasciitis of the breast. We report a case of nodular fasciitis of the breast, a rare histological type of breast tumor.

Breast Nodular Fasciitis: A Comprehensive Review

“…Twenty-two cases included in 20 papers, published in the period under investigation, were analyzed in detail [4,5,6,7,8,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25]. The main demographic and clinical characteristics of the enrolled patients are summarized in table 1.…”

“…Breast nodular fasciitis is an extremely rare clinical condition, with only a few cases reported in the medical literature [24]. Its rarity and unspecific clinical and radiological characteristics make the differential diagnosis and the management challenging.…”

“…Nevertheless, it is difficult to establish the appropriate criteria for a correct decision between excisional biopsy and conservative management. A non-operative approach should be considered in typical cases with clinical, imaging and biopsy features, as those described before [6,24]. If the criteria for such an approach are not met, US-guided vacuum or surgical excision should be provided to establish definitive diagnosis and to cure.…”

Nodular fasciitis of the breast clinically resembling breast cancer in an elderly woman: a case report

“…We present a case of an elderly female with NF of the breast. While the mean age of patients in a previously reported study was 39 years (range, 17–84 years) [ 1 ], our patient is the oldest among the reported patients with NF of the breast, at 88 years. NF is a proliferative lesion of reactive fibroblastic cells arising from the fascia of the subcutaneous tissue.…”

A spontaneously resolving breast lesion: imaging and cytological findings of nodular fasciitis of the breast with FISH showing USP6 gene rearrangement

“…Nodular fasciitis has more frequently been described by ultrasound. Sonographically, it is usually hypoechoic 6 7. It may have a sinister malignant appearance with ill defined margins and ‘taller-than-wide’ features; however, this is not a consistent findings as well-defined smooth margins are also reported 1–5…”