Year: 2014
Type: editorial
Abstract: In this issue of the Open Breast Cancer Journal we have assembled a group of manuscripts from experts in the field of diagnostic and experimental breast pathology to report on changes influencing clinical care and to provide new insights into the mechanistic underpinnings of mammary gland neoplastic progression.Harigopal and Chhieng, at Yale University, reviewed the changing face of breast cytology focusing, in part, on "the benefits and limitations of fine needle aspiration biopsies in diagnoses of breast lesions" as western societies increasingly abandon this technique for core biopsy interpretation.They weave into their historical tapestry the rise of molecular cytopathology and the continued use of cytology as part of intraoperative examination by pathologists.Adams reporting from Emory University covers one of the newly rediscovered human breast premalignant conditions, flat epithelial atypia, an outgrowth of the attempt for better defining of columnar cell lesions through breast core biopsies.Perhaps most critically, the realization that all such lesions are not flat and that via morphologic, immunophenotypic, and molecular criteria, these lesions are better tied to breast neoplasia ending in invasive carcinoma is more fully explored.Wei and Hammed take a different direction in breast pathology diagnoses by reporting on spindle cell lesions within this organ.They emphasize a broad range of lesions stretching from reactive conditions to the neoplastic and discuss entities such as fibromatosis and nodular fasciitis (traditionally thought of as soft tissue tumors) through pseudoangiomatous stromal hyperplasia, clearly a breast specific entity, and then turn to other, more exotic, entities including inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor and reactive spindle cell nodule ending with a highly malignant spindle cell carcinoma and angiosarcoma.
Source: The Open Breast Cancer Journal
Authors: Gene P. Siegal, Andra R. Frost
Institutions: University of Alabama at Birmingham, UAB Medicine
Language: English
Subfield: Pathology and Forensic Medicine
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2048217631