Phylloides tumor – is it cancer?
Phyllodes tumors of the breast are very uncommon. Phyllodes tumors are made up of a mixture of the fibrous tissues and lining cells of the breast and so they are sometimes called fibroepithelial tumours. They range in their behaviour from being completely benign (non-cancerous) to malignant (cancerous) growths. The majority, however, are benign tumours. Even the malignant tumours tend to stay confined within the breast, only a minority, perhaps 1 in 3 to 1 in 4, spreading elsewhere in the body. Those phyllodes tumors that are malignant are very different from other breast cancers, they behave like sarcomas (cancers of fibrous and supportive tissues in the body) rather than carcinomas (the usual type of breast cancer). This means that when they spread they usually send seedlings to the lungs, and only rarely involve the lymph glands under the arm; they are not influenced by female hormones and they do not respond to the same types of chemotherapy that are used for other breast cancers.
