Periductal Mastitis in a Male Breast

Abstract

Periductal mastitis and mammary duct ectasia in the female breast are now considered as separate disease entities, and these diseases affect different age groups and have different etiologies and clinical symptoms (1, 2). These two entities have very rarely been reported in the male breast, and they have long been considered as the same disease as that in the female breast without any differentiation (3 9). To the best of our knowledge, only twelve cases of this disease have been reported in the literature (3 9). We report here on a rare case of periductal mastitis in a male who had been treated with chemotherapy for lung cancer. Case ReportA 50-year-old male presented with a mass of several months' duration in the subareolar region of the left breast. The physical examination revealed a tender subareolar mass without redness or heat. There were no palpable axillary lymph nodes on both sides, and the other breast was normal. There was no previous history of breast problem or trauma, and the patient had no family history of breast cancer. He had been a heavy smoker for 30 pack-years. He had diagnosed with lung cancer (adenocarcinoma) 18 months before. The patient had been treated with chemotherapy because the cancer stage was IIIB. The chemotherapy regimen consisted of cisplatin (Cisplan) and germcitabine (Gemzar). Periductal mastitis and mammary duct ectasia are now considered as separate disease entities in the female breast, and these two diseases affect different age groups and have different etiologies and clinical symptoms. These two entities have very rarely been reported in the male breast and they have long been considered as the same disease as that in the female breast without any differentiation. We report here on the radiologic findings of a rare case of periductal mastitis that developed during the course of chemotherapy for lung cancer in a 50-year-old male. On ultrasonography, there was a partially defined mass with adjacent duct dilatation and intraductal hypoechogenicity, and this correlated with an immature abscess with a pus-filled, dilated duct and periductal inflammation on the pathologic examination.