Metastasis of primary lung carcinoma to the breast: a systematic review of the literature

A Case of Lung Adenocarcinoma with Metastasis to the Breast

“…Hence, systemic assessment is not performed unless there is a high suspicion from clinical and pathological data [13]. Two thirds of cases of NSCLC metastasis to the breast presented metachronously and most were ipsilateral to the lung primary [7,12]. This case had a synchronous, contralateral breast metastasis at presentation, not very late in her natural history.…”

“…mammaglobin stains positive in 48% to 72.1% of adenocarcinomas of the breast but is negative in lung adenocarcinomas. TTF-1 is a wellestablished specific biomarker indicating a lung cancer primary and is positive in 68% to 80% of lung adenocarcinomas [7,15,16]. The combination of Napsin-A and TTF-1 staining raises the specificity for diagnosing lung adenocarcinoma and makes differentiation from thyroid, breast and other adenocarcinomas and lung malignancies [17,18].…”

“…Treatment of stage IV lung cancer is based on systemic chemotherapy with a palliative intent in patients with acceptable performance, with or without radiotherapy. Surgery is not usually chosen unless the primary tumor remains indolent in its course [7]. Oligometastasis is relatively common in NSCLC and had an incidence of 26% to 55% in clinical studies.…”

“…A review indicated that 36% of reported cases received chemotherapy alone. Twenty percent of the patients received chemotherapy in addition to surgery and 20% had received radiotherapy of the lung primary in their treatment course [7]. Reported cases of metastasis to the breast from lung primary survived around 2 months from diagnosis [11] and about 80% of patients with breast metastasis from the lung died within the first year [13].…”

“…The incidence of subclinical or clinical involvement of breasts from known cancers has a range of 0.4% to 6.6% depending on whether hematologic malignancies are included or not [3][4][5]. The source of metastases to the breast are commonly hematologic malignancies, and melanomas [5][6][7]. Metastasis from lung adenocarcinoma to the breast is reported frequently in the literature and can mimic triple negative breast cancer, thus for an effective management, careful clinical and pathological differentiational diagnosis is required [8].…”