Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Dear editor
I read with great interest the article by de Thill et al. [1] in which they presented prospective real-world data of patients with metastatic invasive lobular cancer (mILC) as compared to patients with metastatic invasive ductal cancer (mIDC) receiving systemic therapy in routine care in Germany. They concluded that ILC histopathology was not associated with a better clinical outcome in multivariate analysis, suggesting the need for more tailored treatment strategies for patients with the lobular subtype, despite patients with mILC presenting with some favorable prognostic factors. However, the authors did not describe whether mILC is pure or mixed invasive ductal and lobular carcinoma (IDLC). Because some cases with mILC also carry features of (mIDC), the definition of cases with mILC may be important whether they are pure ILC or mixed IDLC [2]. Furthermore, one study compared the breast cancer patients ILC, IDC and mixed IDLC in terms of clinicopathological and treatment features, metastatic patterns and long-term survival. They suggest that IDLC may have a worse prognosis than IDC and ILC [3]. Taken all together, this issue should be clarified to get better comparison of mILC with mIDC.
Data Availability
Enquiries about data availability should be directed to the authors.
References
Thill M, Zahn MO, Welt A et al (2023) Treatment and outcome in metastatic lobular breast cancer in the prospective German research platform OPAL. Breast Cancer Res Treat. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-023-06882-7
Bulut N, Dede DS, Sari E, Altundag K (2008) Pure or mixed-type invasive lobular carcinoma? Hum Pathol 39(7):1121
Duraker N, Hot S, Akan A, Nayır PÖ (2020) A comparison of the clinicopathological features, metastasis sites and survival outcomes of invasive lobular, invasive ductal and mixed invasive ductal and lobular breast carcinoma. Eur J Breast Health 6(1):22–31. https://doi.org/10.5152/ejbh.2019.5004
Funding
No funding.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
We declare that I have no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
Not applicable.
Informed consent
Not applicable.
Research involving in human and animal rights
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Altundag, K. Metastatic pure invasive lobular breast cancer or metastatic mixed invasive ductal and lobular breast cancer: are they different entities?. Breast Cancer Res Treat 198, 623 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-023-06906-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-023-06906-2