Diverse Biological Behavior of Phyllodes Tumor of the Breast

Phyllodes tumor is an uncommon fibro epithelial breast tumor with diverse biological behavior. The tumor closely resemble as fibroadenoma of the breast. On one end phyllodes is slow growing benign tumor, the other end tumor grows rapidly behave like sarcoma which metastasizes, and phyllodes can turn to frank sarcoma. Tumor can be diagnosed on clinical basis i.e. large mass with lobulated (bosselated) surface; skin is thinned out due to stretching by rapidly enlarging tumor with engorged cutaneous veins. Lump usually present in upper and outer quadrant of the breast or occupies entire breast and freely mobile within the breast. Final confirmation can be achieved by FNAC, USG and mammography and MRI. High recurrence rate is reported following limited resection where as wide excision has less recurrence. Simple mastectomy is indicated in case of large and recurrent tumor. Malignant tumor will not respond to chemo-radiotherapy. We came across four cases of phyllodes tumors almost in a decade from 2004 to 2014. The age incidence was same as mentioned in the literature. Out of four cases two phyllodes turned to sarcoma. One was giant fibro adenoma in which a section of histological picture showed phyllodes element. We are interested to publish this article because we observed the sequence of events in our cases as mentioned in the literature. Phyllodes tumor is a variant of fibroadenoma to benign phyllodes tumor, turning to sarcoma.