Problems of Differential Histopathologic Diagnosis in Concomitant Thyroid and Mammary Carcinoma

Abstract

Description of four female patients with carcinoma of the thyroid and of the breast, each case presenting: different morphologic diagnostic problems arising in multiple primary carcinomas. In case one the tumors appeared metasynchronously (4-year interval) and remained clinically and pathologically autonomous. The second case is an example of clinically occult lobular carcinoma of the breast into an adenoma of the thyroid gland. In the third case a small tubular adenocarcinoma of the breast arose two years after a thyroid cancer and had to be differentiated from a subcutaneous metastasis of the latter. In case four the two primary carcinomas were synchronous and metastasized in the same lymphnode area. The different morphology of the secondaries allowed identification of the source in all the lymphnodes but one, in which the structures of both primary tumors could be detected.