CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Vol 11, 182-190, Copyright
© 1961 by American Cancer Society
Fibroadenoma of the Breast
Joseph H. Farrow M.D.1
1 The Breast Service, Department of Surgery, Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases, New York, N. Y.
Fibroadenomas are benign, slow-growing and encapsulated fibroepithelial tumors with a tendency to multiplicity. They first appear during adolescence and are most often found in young adults. Their etiology is not known although ovarian function seems to be a factor in their growth and persistence. Exceptions to the relatively slow growth are not common but do occur in the juvenile forms, during pregnancy and in those lesions that develop cystosarcoma phyllodes. Alterations of the epithelial constituents within a fibroadenoma may or may not occur in unison with similar changes in the surrounding breast tissue. With extremely few exceptions these alterations are of a benign disposition. The growth variations occurring in the stromal constituents are most important; these give rise to the benign and malignant forms of cystosarcoma phyllodes. Hence, malignant changes within a fibroadenoma are usually sarcomatous and very rarely carcinomatous in nature. Fibroadenomas should be surgically excised.
