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5 slides generated from the cancer page, with a quiz from the open benchmark and speaker notes that cite the sources. Arrow keys move between slides; Print gives one slide per page.
Invasive cribriform carcinoma is a rare, low-grade type of breast cancer whose cells grow in sieve-like nests, closely related to tubular carcinoma. In its pure form it has an excellent outlook, with no deaths from the cancer in the defining series, and it is treated like other hormone-driven breast cancer with the least treatment possible.
The WHO classification defines invasive cribriform carcinoma by invasive nests with sieve-like spaces making up over 90 percent of the tumour (classical form) or over 50 percent with a tubular component (Tan 2020). In the Edinburgh review of 1,003 carcinomas, 51 were predominantly cribriform; of the 35 classical cases none had died of the carcinoma 10 to 21 years later and 30 remained alive, while the 16 mixed cases with less differentiated areas did worse but still better than invasive carcinoma in general (Page 1983). In the George Washington series pure and predominant cribriform carcinomas metastasised to axillary nodes frequently but almost never to more than three nodes, were oestrogen-receptor positive in 100 percent and progesterone-receptor positive in 69 percent, and had five-year survival of 100 percent for pure or at least 50 percent cribriform tumours (Venable 1990).
How it differs from its parent: with tubular carcinoma it forms the low-grade luminal special types with near-normal survival; it must be distinguished from cribriform ductal carcinoma in situ, which often accompanies it, and from adenoid cystic carcinoma.
| Setting | Approach | Guideline |
|---|---|---|
| All stages | Treated as HR-positive breast cancer with the least treatment the parent page allows. | not mapped |