Paget’s disease of the breast

experience of a university center

Abstract

Objective: To determine the prevalence of Paget’s disease of the breast (PD) among cases of ductal carcinomas diagnosed in a university hospital between 2003 and 2007; describe clinical characteristics and analyze the survival of these cases. Methods: Retrospective cohort study, by reviewing medical records. Frequency analysis was performed for all variables and used Kaplan-Meier curve for the representation of overall survival. Results: In 278 cases of breast ductal carcinoma, 14 cases were PD determining prevalence of 5.0%. A case was excluded from analysis because of incomplete data. The mean age at diagnosis was 57.1 (±11.2) years. Of the cases analyzed, 11 (84.6%) had palpable tumor and 9 (69.3%) presented lesion of the nipple-areola complex. Only one case was not submitted to mastectomy because she died during neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Radiotherapy was performed in six cases (46.2%); chemotherapy in eleven cases (84.6%); endocrinoterapia in six cases (46.2%).Immunohistochemistry identified five cases (38.5%) with expression of hormone receptors and twelve patients (92.3%) with overexpression of HER2. The overall survival of patients was 61.5 (±13.4) months, and there was no local recurrence after a mean follow-up of 75.8 months. Conclusion: There was a prevalence of Paget’s disease of the breast associated with invasive carcinomas with advanced clinical stages; which possibly resulted in overall survival rate lower than that observed in other studies for the region.