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65-year-old woman with history of left breast cancer 12 years ago. Annual follow up

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And our next patient is a 65-year-old

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woman with a history of left breast cancer

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12 years ago, for a routine follow-up.

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So here are the CC and MLO views for this

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patient, and she has had a lumpectomy on

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the left, so her scar is marked with that

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interrupted line sticker, and so this is

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her lumpectomy scar and her lumpectomy site.

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And we compared to earlier prior mammograms.

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Looking at that same lumpectomy site,

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there was a feeling, you know,

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even though she had a lot of distortion back

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here, it looks as if the lumpectomy site

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maybe became a little bit more dense.

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And then on the MLO view, there's a lot of

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distortion back here and on her prior exam,

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but it looks like compared to the new one, the current

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study, the lumpectomy site looks more bulky.

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So a lumpectomy site, even if there's

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really significant distortion,

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it should stay the same over time,

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or maybe the scar retracts a little bit.

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We may see some calcifications forming,

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but usually either things stay the

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same or they get better appearing.

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You know, there's an improvement in the appearance

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of the scar over time, and we don't want to see

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the scar looking more bulky or more prominent.

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So just looking at this in the tomosynthesis

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images, you can see that as we scroll

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through, there's some calcifications there

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at the lumpectomy site, and there's also

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this extra sort of bulky tissue at the

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posterior aspect of that lumpectomy site.

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And on the CC view, you know, lots of

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calcifications there and some extra

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bulkiness to that lumpectomy site.

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And just scrolling through,

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there's some calcifications that

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are sort of fine linear branching.

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They don't belong there.

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It's not our typical dystrophic

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looking calcification.

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And then it looks like there may be more

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mass-like tissue there at the lumpectomy.

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And it's definitely difficult

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to look at lumpectomy sites.

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Because they can be very distorted,

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but they shouldn't look worse over time.

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So we ended up doing some extra views

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with ultrasound.

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So we went to ultrasound and lumpectomy

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site can be very difficult to evaluate

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with ultrasound because there's a lot

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of hypoechoic scarring at the site anyway.

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And you may not really have a comparison, but we

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knew where the scar was on the patient's skin.

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And it just looked like there was more

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mass than we would expect when we scrolled

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through, so we thought this was probably

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new, and there was some blood flow to it.

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Here was the scar coming from her skin,

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but then this seemed to be extra tissue.

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We also looked at her axillary lymph nodes.

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There's a lymph node here with a very thin cortex.

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And there's a lymph node here

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with a much thicker cortex.

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So, our recommendation was to biopsy

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this mass, and we biopsied the

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lymph node with the thicker cortex.

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And this was invasive ductal carcinoma in

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the breast and metastatic carcinoma involving

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that lymph node, where the cortex was thicker.

Report

Faculty

Lisa Ann Mullen, MD

Assistant Professor; Breast Imaging Fellowship Director

Johns Hopkins Medicine

Tags

Women's Health

Ultrasound

Tomosynthesis

Neoplastic

Mammography

Breast

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