DOES FIBROADENOMA CONFER A HIGHER BREAST-CANCER RISK?

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DOES FIBROADENOMA CONFER A HIGHER BREAST-CANCER RISK?

There is controversy over whether fibroadenomas -- benign breast tumors commonly found in young women -- mark an increased risk for subsequent breast cancer. This study compared breast-cancer rates in three groups: 1835 women with fibroadenoma, a control group of 1640 sisters-in-law of these women, and the general population of Connecticut.

Overall, during a mean follow-up period of about 23 years, the women with fibroadenoma had approximately double the rate of breast cancer as compared with both control groups. However, this risk varied among subgroups of fibroadenoma patients. In women whose fibroadenomas had "complex" histology or who had adjacent tissue with proliferative disease, the risk of breast cancer was more than doubled compared to the population controls and more than tripled compared to the sister-in-law controls. A family history of breast cancer appeared to augment these risks. In contrast, the roughly two-thirds of fibroadenoma patients with neither complex histology nor breast cancer in the family did not have an increased risk for breast cancer.

Comment: A minority of women with fibroadenoma may be at increased risk for breast cancer. Whether those women would benefit from early mammographic surveillance, as some have proposed, is unknown.

— AS Brett

Published in Journal Watch General Medicine July 22, 1994