Short communicationMelanoma metastasis to the breast: A diagnostic pitfall
Introduction
The breast is a rare site for metastatic tumors [1]. Involvement of the breast by metastatic melanoma is also rarely reported resulting in its very rare clinical consideration. On the other hand, melanoma can be misdiagnosed as adenocarcinoma microscopically because of its protean histologic patterns. These features make melanoma metastasis to the breast a diagnostic pitfall. We report a case of widely metastatic malignant melanoma with diagnostic difficulties in both clinical and histopathological evaluation.
Section snippets
Case report
The patient was a 39-year-old woman with complaints of painful nodules at the trunk, head and neck, and loss of appetite for 1 month. Her past medical history was unremarkable. In the physical examination, there were multiple skin nodules, some of them with purplish discoloration (Fig. 1), ranging between 0.5 and 3 cm at the head, neck, chest wall, back, and abdomen; nodules seated in bilateral breast tissue, and hard, fixed lymphadenopathies of the right supraclavicular region. The nodules were
Discussion
Melanoma metastasis to the breast is a diagnostic challenge. Breast metastasis from any extramammary tumor is extremely rare, including malignant melanoma, making its clinical consideration also very rare [1]. Furthermore, malignant melanoma can produce diagnostic problems also microscopically because of its protean histologic patterns [2]. In some cases, it can hardly be distinguished from an adenocarcinoma on simple microscopic examination of H and E stained samples [2]. This was also the
Conflict of interest statement
There is no conflict of interest.
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