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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.
Mucinous carcinoma is a rare type of breast cancer in which the cancer cells float in pools of mucus they have made. It is usually hormone-receptor positive, slow-growing and less likely to reach the lymph nodes than ordinary breast cancer, so its outlook is good and it is treated like other hormone-driven breast cancer.
The WHO classification defines pure mucinous carcinoma by clusters of low-grade cells in lakes of extracellular mucin making up over 90 percent of the tumour, and separates it from mixed mucinous carcinoma and from mucinous cystadenocarcinoma (Tan 2020). In a Taiwanese series of 93 pure mucinous carcinomas compared with 2,674 infiltrating ductal carcinomas, hormone receptor expression was higher and grade, hormone receptor status and node involvement were all more favourable, confirming its less aggressive behaviour (World J Surg Oncol 2013).
How it differs from its parent: mucin makes the tumour soft and well-circumscribed, so it can look benign on imaging; nodal spread is uncommon in the pure form; and the mixed form (mucinous with ordinary no special type carcinoma) behaves like the ordinary component and is treated as such.
| Setting | Approach | Guideline |
|---|---|---|
| All stages | Treated as HR-positive breast cancer: surgery, radiotherapy after breast conservation, endocrine therapy; chemotherapy for the mixed form as for no special type disease. | not mapped |