My Clinical Notes
- Most common benign tumour of the female breast
- Tumour arising from the intralobular stroma
- More common before the age of 30 but can occur at any age during reproductive life
- Frequently multiple and bilateral
- Young women usually present with a palpable mass, older women with a mammogarphic calcification or density
- Epithelium is hormone responsive and there can be an increase in size towards the end of the menstrual cycle
- It may mimic carcinoma during pregnancy due to an increase in size or infarction and inflammation
- Regression usually occurs after the menopause
- Stroma may become densely hyalinized and may calcify
- Large lobulated calcifications have a distinct mammographic appearance
- Generally grow as spherical nodules that are well demarcated and freely movable
- Vary in size from less than 1cm to large tumours which can replace most of the breast
- Some fibroadenomas are polyclonal in origin and are probably due to focal hyperplasia of lobular stroma
- These tumours may be due to drug related growth stimulation
- Another subset of fibroadenomas are benign neoplasms of stromal cells
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