Benign Breast Conditions: Overview of Types

Our topic, benign tumors. We will walk through a bunch of benign tumors. you’ll notice that in this table, we do not discuss fibrocystic change at all. Fibrocystic change is not a tumor. It is a change. We’ll walk through in greater detail what that means. Our first benign tumor here will be fibroadenoma. Characteristics: Small, mobile, firm mass with sharp edges. This is well encapsulated. Small, maybe freely mobile. Who is your patient? Young female. Just like fibrocystic change. Both of these patients are young. Increase in size and tenderness with increased estrogen. Here once again, we’re looking at hormonal type of changes. Fibrocystic change, we did the same. So how can you distinguish one from the other? An adenoma is an adenoma. It is a tumor. It does not have the fibrosis type of change. It does not have the cystic type of change. You won’t find a blue dome type of appearance here. You do not have sclerosing adenosis nor would you truly have – Well, maybe perhaps you could have epithelial hyperplasia. But the point is, this is a sold tumor, which is located most commonly by the stroma deep in the breast. So it could be difficult to actually palpate because of where it’s located. But if you can, it’s freely mobile and if you were to take it out -- this is a tumor, so you can take it out. And when you do, well, because of where it’s located, there might be a tumor that might be rather hemorrhagic. There might be a little bit of blood in there. Not a precursor for breast cancer. True benign tumor. Then we have a papilloma, intraductal papilloma. What’s occurring here? A small tumor that grows in the lactiferous duct. So if you’re clearly not at...