Purpose: Information on tubular carcinoma (TC) of breast is limited due to its rarity. A multi-institutional study was performed to investigate the prognosis and failure patterns of TC compared to invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC).
Materials and methods: We collected retrospective data on 205 patients with TC from eleven institutions. For each TC case, 3 cases with IDC were matched according to similar size, t-stage, and n-stage from the same institution. Patterns of failure, disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were assessed and compared between the groups.
Results: DFS at 5 years was 98.8% and 97.3% and OS at 5 years was 99.5% and 99.6% in TC and IDC, respectively. Among the patients with TC, 5 patients (2.4%) developed contralateral breast cancer, while 3 patients (0.5%) presented with contralateral breast cancer in patients with IDC.
Conclusions: The TC of breast presents an excellent prognosis, but the contralateral breast cancer tends to be more frequently observed compared to IDC in Korean women.
Keywords: Breast cancer; Radiotherapy; Tubular carcinoma.
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