Tumor characteristics and clinical outcome of tubular and mucinous breast carcinomas

Purpose: To comprehensively characterize the clinical and biologic features of tubular and mucinous carcinomas in a large cohort of patients and to re late this to clinical outcome and management. Patients and Methods: The clinical and biologic features of 444 patients wi th tubular and 1,221 patients with mucinous carcinomas were compared with t hose of 43,587 patients with infiltrating ductal carcinoma, not otherwise s pecified (NOS), Disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) for p atients with tubular and mucinous carcinomas were compared with those of pa tients with NOS carcinomas and with age-matched sets from the general popul ation, Results: Tubular and mucinous carcinomas were more likely to occur in older patients, be smaller in size (tubular only), have substantially less nodal involvement, be estrogen receptor- and progesterone receptor positive, hav e a lower S-phase fraction, be diploid, and be c-erbB-2- and epidermal grow th factor receptor negative compared with NOS carcinomas. Axillary node inv olvement war a poor prognostic feature in mucinous but not tubular carcinom as. Mucinous carcinomas less than or equal to 1 cm had a less than or equal to 5% incidence of node involvement. The 5-year DFS and OS were 94% and 88 % for tubular, 90% and 80% for mucinous, and 80% and 77% for NOS carcinoma, respectively (P <.001 for differences among all three types for both DFS a nd OS). The 5-year OS of females from the general population age-matched to the patients with tubular and mucinous carcinomas was 89% and 82%, respect ively which is not different from the OS of patients with tubular or mucino us carcinomas. Conclusion: The biologic phenotype of tubular and mucinous carcinomas is qu ite favorable, Consistent with this observation, the survival of patients w ith tubular and mucinous carcinomas is similar to that of the general popul ation. Systemic adjuvant therapy and node dissection may be avoided in many patients with these special types of carcinoma. J Clin Oncol 17:1442-1448. (C) 1999 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.