Paget disease. A special type of breast cancer.

Abstract

The Paget's disease of the breast is one of the special form of breast cancer, its clinical expression is a kind of dermatitis named eczematous and it even has an ulceration in the nipple areole complex, it has been very often referred to medical treatment despite its neoplasic origin. We've made a retrospective and lineal study of 5 patient that were admitted in the General Surgery Service at The teaching hospital “Dr. Mario Muñoz Monroy” located in Columbus, Matanzas Province, from january of 1974 up to december of 2002, both included. The main objective of this research was to study some topics about this disease and were done too an exhaustive review of the literature. We found that the general incidence of Paget disease was of 1.03% between a universe of 485 female patients that were treated by breast cancer during the period of time referred above. The patients with palpable mass had a higher incidence of invasive ductal carcinoma and they had too a high percent of positive axilar nodes and either their survival was poor too. The conservative surgical treatment was a good choice for the patients with well-limited extension of Paget's disease, while for the ones who had an adyacent mass the modified radical mastectomy was the best option. Physicians must keep in their minds the diagnosis of Paget's disease in all the dermatologic disorders that affect the nipple-areole complex in order to do an early diagnosis and offer them the right treatment in early stages and a better survival rates.