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Case - Invasive Lobular Carcinoma

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So, this is a woman in her early 70s who

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had heterogeneously dense breasts, almost

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extremely dense breasts, if you look at the

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very dense anterior areas, that opted for

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supplemental screening with abbreviated MR.

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And the way we do this is, of course, there's a

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scout, which you can see in the upper left here.

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And then we do a T2 study here, and we're looking

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here for obviously any fluid

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collections, anything like that.

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And it's important when we

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are characterizing lesions.

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And then we have our pre-contrast study here,

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and you can see how dense her breasts are.

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And you don't see any obvious

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abnormality here, but we then inject

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contrast and initially we waited about

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30 seconds, but we're finding some women

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with poor cardiac output weren't getting

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good background parenchymal enhancement.

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So, we now draw an ROI on the aorta to

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make sure that there is actually cardiac

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output before we do the post contrast.

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So, this is her non-sub post-contrast image, and

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I think you can see over here on the right side

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an enhancing lesion that actually looks a little

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bit irregular bordering her glandular tissue.

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And so, if I show you where that

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is, you can see it's not too bright.

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It's,

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you know, avidly enhancing.

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And if I show you my subtraction image, which

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I'm going to drag, well, this is her MIP as well.

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And you can see the lesion.

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One thing I should mention is I

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think it's a good thing to do.

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Uh, look at the MIP kind of first

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to get an overall of her breasts and

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everything in the symmetry, et cetera.

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And you can obviously see this

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standing out as a dominant lesion.

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So now let's look at the subtraction image.

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Again, here and there's the lesion standing out.

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No other lesions, no adenopathy,

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nothing in the other breast.

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And so, that's a suspicious lesion, obviously.

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So now you might say, well,

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what's her mammogram look like?

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So, let's take a look at that.

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So here you can see her mammogram and you'd

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expect this to be out in the lateral right breast.

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This is her synthetic image.

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Let's see what it looks like on her Tomo.

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So here's her Tomo and I'm scrolling through this.

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And the question is, in retrospect,

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is there anything maybe that's

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distorting or a mass that can be seen?

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And I don't know, you know, there's a little

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area of density and you can begin to imagine.

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Maybe there's something there,

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but I don't think it's really.

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You know, very evident.

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This is her MLO

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synthetic view.

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And again, there's nothing that really stands out.

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I'm going to pull up her Tomo of the right

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breast here, enlarge it a little bit.

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Let's see if we can see anything.

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We're going over in the lateral breast.

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Is there anything that 1 can correlate?

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So, no, yeah, that makes you feel pretty

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good, but doesn't answer the question.

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So, the next step for her would really be a

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targeted ultrasound because it is a little mass.

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And certainly, if it can be seen on

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ultrasound, it's an easier biopsy for her.

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I think it's an easier biopsy for me as well.

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And that's what we generally do.

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It also takes less time on the

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very expensive magnet, etc.

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So, let me show you the ultrasound study.

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So here's targeted scanning of her right breast.

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What you see is really what correlates

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with the MR finding a small mass.

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It looks a little bit taller than wide in the

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right location, 10 o'clock in the right breast.

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And so this was indeed biopsied

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under ultrasound-guided core biopsy.

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And this is actually a small

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invasive lobular carcinoma.

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I would have thought it was ductal, but it's not.

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Anyway, an invasive lobular carcinoma,

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she went on to have a very limited

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lumpectomy and a sentinel node dissection.

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And of course, with a small lesion, unlikely to

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have any positive nodes, no positive nodes at all.

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So, early detection of an

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invasive lobular carcinoma.

Report

Faculty

Emily F. Conant, MD

Professor of Radiology, Chief of Breast Imaging, Vice Chair of Faculty Development

Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania

Tags

Screening

Neoplastic

MRI

Diagnosis & Staging

Breast

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