Abstract :
Background: Carcinoma breast is associated with various changes in organ and at the tissue level. The desmoplastic response in a tumor due to tumor hypoxia may result in dense or sparse, homogenous or focally hetrogenous fibrosis of the breast tissue. Peritumoral and stromal fibrosis has been assessed as an marker of intratumoral hypoxia and is being studied as histological surrogate prognostic parameter in breast cancer.
Materials and Methods: We studied the topographical distribution and histological characterization of fibrosis and correlated it with various other histopathological parameters. 50 patients of carcinoma breast presenting to our institute were included in the study.
Results: We obtained a statistically significant correlation of presence of fibrosis with presence of lymphovascular invasion (p value =0.043), while we could not obtain any significant difference with age, menopause, tumor size, tumor grade, pathological stage, lymph node involvement, presence of necrosis, adipocytic invasion, duration of tumor, laterality, presence of inflammatory infiltrate and with ER, PR, HER2Neu status.
Conclusions: This is a limited study in a small number of patients focussing on various stromal changes in breast cancer. This study has further characterized the heterogeneous nature of fibrosis in breast carcinoma using special staining which may facilitate the physician in making patient diagnosis, prognostication and outcome.
Keyword :
Breast cancer, Fibrosis, Stromal reaction