This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Breast Cancer  • Diagnosis  • Alert me on articles by topic

David V. Feliciano, MD
From the Department of Surgery, Grady Memorial Hospital and Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Ga.

Arch Surg. 2001;136:475-477.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

INTRODUCTION

A 46-YEAR-OLD previously healthy woman was seen for a rapidly enlarging right breast mass. She had been told many years before that she had a right breast "cyst," and the size had evidently not changed until the past 8 to 12 weeks. The patient denied a history of familial breast disease, left breast disease, or nipple discharge. Physical examination demonstrated venous engorgement in the skin of the right breast and a 15 x 10-cm firm, nontender, movable mass (Figure 1). There were no other skin changes, no fixation to the chest wall, and no palpable axillary nodes. Fine-needle aspiration of the right breast mass demonstrated multiple fragments of stroma with marked atypia.

Figure 1. A 15 x 10-cm mass in the patient's right breast grew rapidly during the past 8 to 12 weeks. A "cyst" had been noted previously.

What Is the Most Appropriate Treatment for This Patient?

A. External beam radiation therapy . . . [Full Text of this Article]