Epidemiologic Analysis of the Surgical Specimens of Breast Carcinosarcomas
Examined at a Reference Laboratory in a Nigerian Community
The idea that carcinoma and sarcoma can exist together dated to as early as 1804.
Pictorial illustrations of this phenomenon appeared by 1882. Nowadays, with regard to the
breast, it is reportedly rare, there being but the documentation of one or two cases.
Therefore, i.e. a series of 12 cases is presented from one ethnic group in Nigeria.
The ages ranged from 22 to 52 years (average, 35 years). Two cases were diagnosed
clinically as benign, 2 others as Cystosarcoma Phyllodes and the rest as carcinoma.
By 1883, David Finlay of the Middlesex Hospital of London presented to the Pathological
Society of that City the illustrations of the different carcinomatous and sarcomatous
components found in the one patient’s fibroid uterus.
Nowadays, with particular reference to the breast, contributors from countries
as far apart as Jamaica,3 USA4 and Islamabad5 emphasized the rarity of mammary carcinosarcoma
as contained in the literature.
The total was possible because of the establishment of a histopathology data pool as was
proposed by a Birmingham, UK group. Now, these cases pertain to biopsy materials, whose
parameters do not include surgical treatments and outcomes.
Surg Res Open J. 2015; 1(1): 25-27. doi: 10.17140/SROJ-1-104
